Time Sink

Ok what have I done to myself! I finished my last forever applique project last fall, and there will be photos of that very soon. When I did my scrap bin frenzy during my 2017 Summer in Oregon I was cutting and sorting fabrics for several quilts including triangles and made this tree of life setting. Well I could not just leave it at that. I knew that a vine border with leaves and a few critters would take the quilt to another level so I had been planning that vine since I set the blocks and the outer border with enough space to put the vine. I spent quite some time fiddling with the line the vine would travel last fall. I thought I had fabric for the vine that was already made into a bias strip but when I laid it on the quilt it was just too thick. I headed to the quilt store and bought yardage of a beautiful deep forest green grunge fabric and cut bias strips 5/8" wide. I then put off making the long strip needed to go all the way around the quilt for the vine because I knew it would be fussy. Well I finally decided I just needed to get that going so a week ago I pulled it out and sewed the strips together by hand because being so narrow they needed to be dead on perfect. I spent a good chunk of time pulling that long strip thru my bias maker, slowly carefully wrapping it around an empty toilet paper roll. Now with that step done I basted the vine around the border along the line I had drawn last fall................ok looking good!

The next step was to figure out where the leaves and side branches would go. I had a sticky note pad sitting around that was green so I cut two sizes of leaf shapes. The branches are scraps from the pants I just finished sewing and drapey poly fabric so I just cut some strips and used them for placement. I really liked where this is going.

 

Next I pulled out the bag of green scraps I have been collecting for a couple of years and got leaves cut out and placed over the paper. Yep I really like where this is going!

I spent some time googling birds and decided to put a mountain bluebird on the top of the quilt, and a western bluebird on the bottom. I drew these birds freehand from photographs and now need to pull fabric and get them made up. I am going to use brighter fabrics than what I have here. I just colored my line drawings with colored pencils I had to see how they looked. I am going to try to focus on getting as much applique done this Summer as I can. The thing is that this project is now taking all my sewing time and is quite the time sink. It is fun to see it slowly change and evolve as I go.