Made more progress today – I dug out my copy of “Birds of North America” to find flight profiles of some local birds which I used to create a couple of birds (remember I needed them to cover dark spots in the sky). I started stitching the trees on the left – the tree trunks, the foliage – realized I should have removed much more of the green underlay Friday night when I was taking all that stitching out! At the moment you can see the tree trunks close up, but they don’t show from a distance because they’re lost against that dark green underly. They need something to give them texture (not thread painting, I don’t think – although I’ll try a sample), in the end I may just live with what I have – this, after all is a learning experience.

Tomorrow – gotta tackle the asparagus field itself.

Worked on the trees and shrubs on the right side of the piece this morning:

Also added texture to the roof, although it doesn’t show in the photo.
Next, those trees on the left!
Oh, and I fixed the bubbling in the sky – I split the interfacing in the back to allow me to spread it a wee bit, enough to let the sky lay flat.

Took a close look at the quilt last evening and decided to do something about the MESS on the left hand side – it was 10:00 pm when I started to pick out the stitching (and there was A LOT). When I looked at the clock it was 3:00 am! This morning I looked again and thought about adding “sky” to break up the blob of dark green on the left – definitely better.

Later, I went to Atlantic Fabrics to see if I could find a bit of wide white lace to add bits to make it seem as if the sky were peeking through the leaves. I’ll do that now – after the doubles tennis match which Canada has just won – it’s now 2:1 Canada/Serbia in the Davis Cup tie. One more day to go – Canada “might” just win this series.

Here is the updated piece:

Here’s the project at the end of the afternoon:

I managed to get the entire surface covered, the “asparagus” in the foreground placed and tacked down. The big move forward this morning was the bare deciduous trees on the right side. I learned a lot doing that. I had some “eyelash” yarn which I sandwiched between a pale blue batik fabric and some tulle. I then tacked the yarn down and added to it with some free motion embroidery. THE problem, is that I should have used just the tulle – top and bottom; I’d intended the trees to be in front of the spruce behind the house – but when I tried trimming the backing fabric from the branches, I couldn’t get close enough, so I had to remove the branches on the left side, and extend the branches on the spruce to overlap the bare trees – a valuable lesson!

Then I played a bit with the trees on the left of the piece – what I’ve got there right now is a big mess. I have to spend some time looking at it and looking at pictures of evergreens to see if I can resurrect those trees, or whether I will have to cover them over and start them again!

The asparagus field now needs a lot of free motion embellishment – I’ve done some work on the path to the house, but the large expanse of field will need some experimenting – I want to maintain the featheriness of the asparagus, but there also has to be hints of the stalks. I will have to work on a sample to see whether I can get the effect I want.

I stopped at this point this afternoon, packed up all the stuff I’d brought. Time to stand back and think about the embellishing detail.

Finally, we did a “show and tell” – each piece pinned to a styrofoam slab, stood on a ledge, so we could stand back from the work and really look at it from a distance. We were all justifiably pleased with how the quilts look at this point – they all need a lot more work, but everybody got the surface covered, with the beginnings of the embellishing. We’ve agreed to finish the quilts, and send photos to Laurie and one another when we’re done.

It was a great five days!

It poured today. I have no pictures of Lunenburg. I simply came straight home after we finished up. I’ll post photos as I continue working on the piece.

The project continues. Today I worked on the house, creating a door, windows, and adding chimneys – by building up the elements rather than cutting into the building facade and placing the elements behind the openings – that’s because the raw silk I used for the building frays so easily.
Next I incorporated the house into the setting, stitching it in place with a fine monofilament thread.

I also stitched the tall spruce in place and trimmed away the organza from the edges – next time I’ll know to leave a lot of organza around the element – it was difficult cutting the excess away because I had little to hold on to!
I’ve also played some more with the asparagus field – adding in leaf vein pieces along the top edge and beside the path. I’ve added a second layer of the orange/gold organza to blur the detail of the fabric beneath – tomorrow I will need to stitch all of it in place to hint at the stalks, but not make them too obvious.
I have also begun working on the evergreen trees behind the house – I added tree trunks and a couple of major branches (which will be mostly covered up when I’m done) – I put a layer of cheesecloth over the trees in the background to suggest the spiky branches of the trees, it may need a second layer and something more in the trees nearer the house.

And of course, there’s still some kind of bare deciduous tress needed on the right side – still no idea how to construct them,
First thing tomorrow morning we’ll put our projects on display to see how far everyone has got.

My piece is really beginning to look like a real picture:

And a couple more pictures of Lunenburg – it was a lovely sunny day today – supposed to be a hurricane tomorrow!