This is the pencil study I did for the piece on Palm Sunday, 2006
Front of Journal Page
Text of Back:
This month I am exploring the wonder of God’s Promise
Palm Sunday, 2003. My son was playing the part of Jesus in a Passion Play. The church where this play was being performed was a longish drive from our house. That Sunday morning was drippy and rainy, much like this year’s Palm Sunday. The gray clouds were low and thick with moisture. Since it had rained off and on for the previous couple of weeks, the hills were all green and yellow with a coating of wild mustard plants. On the way to the church early that morning, my husband and I saw the most amazing sight – the clouds parted just a bit and a gorgeous rainbow lit up the ground underneath the break in the clouds. It just seemed so appropriate for us traveling to see a Passion Play to witness such a bright symbol of God’s Promise. I drank in the sight, made a quick sketch on the back of a prescription form and said – “This needs to be a quilt” and I gave it the name of ‘The Promise”, but I had only been quilting for a few months at that point, so I did not know how to approach a landscape quilt. This year, the day before Palm Sunday, I reorganized my sewing supplies into my new sewing room and one of the things I came across in the cleanup process was this scrap of paper with my quick sketch and that became the basis for this month’s piece.
Construction:
Design elements were fused onto the interfacing. I wanted to make ‘thread bunnies’ to represent the trees along the edges of the hills, but ran out of green thread before I could get the machine to do what I wanted. So it ended up being fuzzy yarn stitched to the contours of the hills instead.
The rainbow was trimmed from a piece of material with the rainbow colors but not in the right order so they are little skinny strips of color. The cloud material was purchased at a quilt shop where I safely holed up for a few hours because of a flash flood.
Satin stitching around all the edges of the page completes the construction process.
The rainbow picture above was taken by my daughter Clare.
Palm Sunday, 2003. My son was playing the part of Jesus in a Passion Play. The church where this play was being performed was a longish drive from our house. That Sunday morning was drippy and rainy, much like this year’s Palm Sunday. The gray clouds were low and thick with moisture. Since it had rained off and on for the previous couple of weeks, the hills were all green and yellow with a coating of wild mustard plants. On the way to the church early that morning, my husband and I saw the most amazing sight – the clouds parted just a bit and a gorgeous rainbow lit up the ground underneath the break in the clouds. It just seemed so appropriate for us traveling to see a Passion Play to witness such a bright symbol of God’s Promise. I drank in the sight, made a quick sketch on the back of a prescription form and said – “This needs to be a quilt” and I gave it the name of ‘The Promise”, but I had only been quilting for a few months at that point, so I did not know how to approach a landscape quilt. This year, the day before Palm Sunday, I reorganized my sewing supplies into my new sewing room and one of the things I came across in the cleanup process was this scrap of paper with my quick sketch and that became the basis for this month’s piece.
Construction:
Design elements were fused onto the interfacing. I wanted to make ‘thread bunnies’ to represent the trees along the edges of the hills, but ran out of green thread before I could get the machine to do what I wanted. So it ended up being fuzzy yarn stitched to the contours of the hills instead.
The rainbow was trimmed from a piece of material with the rainbow colors but not in the right order so they are little skinny strips of color. The cloud material was purchased at a quilt shop where I safely holed up for a few hours because of a flash flood.
Satin stitching around all the edges of the page completes the construction process.
The rainbow picture above was taken by my daughter Clare.
5 comments:
So beautiful! God is awesome with the scenes he allows us to enjoy with him. You protrayed it beautifully!
I especially love the contrast of the bright rainbow on the dark sky! Lovely...
The way the rainbow goes into the bright yellow field and spreads out it looks like 'light overcoming the darkness', another great promise of God. Your write-up was very nice and interesting and the quilted piece turned out very well.
The story that goes with this piece makes it even more special. I just love it when we get those inspirational moments!
Ok, now that I see why you wanted to make the thread bunnies I understand. It turned out nice anyway, even if you couldn't do it how you wanted.
I do have a fun product called Xpandaprint, that would've worked well here. Its a black goop (also comes in white), you dab it on with a toothpick, the use a heat gun, & it swells up & makes interesting organic looking texture. The black would've been perfect here, then you could just brush on some green acryllic type of paint, & you'd have nice bushes.
It's a beautiful piece even without the bunnies!
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