Leaves--The Poetry of September

Poetic September

This is my third in a series of artworks dedicated to the great outdoors where I live in the United States--the Pacific Northwest. We are known for our trees. While people often think of towering fir, cedar, and pine trees, we also have cherry, apple and pear, maple and oak, and dogwood, magnolia, and flowering plum. This wall hanging pays homage to the deciduous trees which also play a large part in our landscape.

I created the background with a stamp I carved from a product called SoftCut. First I made a drawing of a slice of vertically cut wood grain in pencil. I transferred the drawing by rubbing it onto a piece of Softcut. The I cut out the lines using V and U-shaped carving tools.

Drawing

Stamp

I stamped on 100% cotton fabric with a color I mixed using Pro-Chem Textile Paints.

Stamped Background

I previously photographed a variety of fallen leaves at Multnomah Falls outside of my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I chose several of them as patterns and cut out a variety of shapes and colors from both opaque and sheer fabrics. Here's a collection of the sheers I drew from that a friend had gifted me. I used everything from chiffon to cheesecloth for texture.

Then I began to layer them into a composition, focusing on placement of both value and color. My goal was to give the impression of leaves which have drifted down from their trees mixing and mingling. To achieve the final composition, I did a layout, took a photo, made adjustments, took another photo, and so on, until I was satisfied.

First Layout

Layout #2

Layout #3, auditioning large corner leaves with paper patterns

Layout #4, auditioning a color

Final Layout

Note in the image above how the sheer fabrics look. You can easily see them. But when all of them appliqués are fused, some of the sheerest fabrics "melt" into the background and the opaque leaves. This is where the fun begins. I used a technique I developed in a previous quilt, "It's Easy Being Green", for the Monochrome exhibit. For that quilt, I layered a chiffon scarf over the fused appliqué, then quilted around each leaf. For the current challenge, I used a light brown tulle instead, because chiffon scarves are not available for the required quilt size of 24" x 32". I purposely used a number of sheer fabrics in this quilt, because I want to communicate the idea of the tree's wood grain shown in the background.