Crooked Gulley Art Quilts

This is it! I'm finished... well, almost. My DH needs to make a wooden frame so that I can wrap the edges around it and staple gun it all in place. About a quarter inch will show of the outer border on the front and then it will wrap around and show on the sides. I also need to clean finish the border edges with a nice quarter inch hem so that it looks finished and neat on the back. I take lengths of grosgrain ribbon and glue it down to cover the staples.  This piece is going into a local art gallery for sale and I want a professional looking back. One of the things I've done on this since last posting it was to create more contrast in the trees. I made the right side shadows on the trunks darker. I also used a white oil pastel and made the left sides of the trunks brighter. I then took an olive green oil pastel and added mossy areas to the trunks. The trees seem to pop more from the background and I like that better. This has been a great experiment, and I gained confidenc

I'm working my way through Nancy Zieman and Natalie Sewell's book: The Art of Landscape Quilting .  The first project spins off of Sewell's art quilt In the Tree Tops . These talented ladies claim it is an easy one to start with as there is no ground cover and it is a close up view. As they recommend, I used only three fabrics. They do a very good job of teaching you how to enhance the tree trunks and background with fabric markers and oil pastels. I'm not disappointed with the book. However, I may be overly criticizing my first attempt, or.... maybe not.  I shadowed the right side of the trunks with black Sharpee Marker and black oil pastels. It takes a lot of nerve to draw on a lovely batik with a black marker! I found I could soften the effect by going over the stark black with gray oil pastel. Then I took a deep breath and forged on. It was very scary! My background trees do not look like the authors. I guess when they do I'll write a book. The authors ad