I was really fortunate that I was able to go to a sale at Our Social Fabric where I found the piece I used for the background. It evokes a landscape at the same time as communicating stitching. I was a little concerned because it is a stretch knit and I wasn’t sure how well it would integrate with the cotton, but as you can see, once I quilted it, it held just fine.
I have a lot of cotton that I have a bad habit of collecting from Craigslist for cheap or free. People often give away their stash. I went out on a limb and chose a very geometric print for the background of my trees. Then I layered up different greens and then started stitching. I was hand stitching so it took a long time, but it offered me more control and I wasn’t sure if my machine would run into tension problems trying to stitch through so many layers. Then I clipped the edges the way my mom does when she is making a ragged edge quilt.
Here are my two squares together. I felt inspired by the dotted circle pattern that I used for the sky in the top square. It reminds me of swirly clouds that I thought could have appeared in a Van Gogh painting. I quilted the swirls right through both layers.