Last week I decided to start work on a new rain forest design which is something I've been intending to do for a while now. I am using the same photo of the 'forest giant' which I used in a previous quilt, one of many photos I have taken when walking in the local rain forest. I like this one because of the sheer size and majesty of the tree.

In the photos to the left you can see some of the fabrics I have chosen from my stash to replicate the tree foliage. Choosing the fabrics is almost the hardest part and I wanted a wide variety to convey as well as possible all the varying shades of the leaves and the ground cover.


In the picture to the right you can see the fabrics cut and placed on the background fabric. I have used a fusible web to secure them in place and they are cut and placed collage style to cover the background. I have left a space for the central tree. The photo below shows a detail of the foliage and the individually cut pieces.


















The tree itself was constructed from several pieces of fabric, the striped batik giving a very realistic  effect.

The picture on the left shows the completed background with the pieces fused in place.

When I made this design before I used invisible thread and a free motion zigzag to secure all the pieces after fusing. This time I decided I would use a variety of threads instead. I used a mixture of cotton variegated, solid colours and polyester threads.

Once everything is stitched in place I'll mve onto the next phase of the design which is deciding what other plants I will include in the design and how I will apply them whether to use raw edge appliqué or thread painting or a mixture of both.

After several weeks of stormy and wet weather we have suddenly moved into a very dry patch. It has been very hot and less humid than usual. This morning I woke to the smell of burning; somewhere in the distance there must be forest fires already.

                                                               I have been away for a few weeks visiting family in England and France, and since getting back to brunei have been unwell with a cold and cough, but I have managed to finish the convergence quilt that I started before going away.
I finished the appliqué detail and then had to decide how I would quilt the design. I chose a variegated cotton thread that picked up the colours used in the quilt and chose an all over random teardrop design.

Over the weekend I spent time putting my quilt together.I was keen to see how it would look when finished as I hadn't tried this method before and found it hard to visualize how the fabrics would look when cut and resewn. The key to this technique is accurate cutting and sewing and careful pressing.

Once the design was completed I then had to decide which fabrics to use for the borders. I decided to use the multi coloured batik for the outer border and the a plain moss green  which picked up colours in the print fabric for the narrow accent border.



               The quilt with borders added.

I was pleased with the way the quilt turned out and love the effect, but I wanted to make the design my own rather than just an idea I had got out of a book so I decided to add some appliqué.

                                                                                                                                               My My first choice was a trailing leaf design which I had drawn from a jungle creeper.

I liked the creeper but felt the design needed something else to balance it. After looking at it from every angle I decided to get rid of the creeper and put a flower instead.




I have now drawn out a pattern from a Chinese design which I thought would be in keeping with the feel of the piece.

The picture on the right shows rough placement of the flowers. I chose a pale violet for the flowers because I wanted them to blend in with the cool colours of the design rather than stand out and draw too much attention.

Yesterday I started sewing the stems and leaves using needleturn appliqué and silk thread.

We are supposed to be in a dry patch at the moment but we are getting beautiful fine weather a lto of teh time and thunder storms at night. Last night there was a huge storm which knocked all the power out for several hours.

Over the weekend I decided to start work on a 'convergence' quilt. I bought the book 'Ricky Tims' Convergence Quilts' after seeing and being inspired by the quilts some friends had been making from the book. It is different to the sort of things I normally work on these days because I prefer appliqué and landscape quilts but having seen the quilts my friends had made and looking at the many examples in the books I wanted to try it myself.

In his book Ricky uses his own mulit coloured hand dyes, but he gives lots of alternatives for other fabrics. As I didn't have any large enough pieces of multi coloured hand dyes it took me some time to find suitable fabrics hunting through my stash. Eventually I chose these two batiks which I thought went well together although I had no idea how the final piece would turn out.












The fabrics cut and laid out ready to start cutting and sewing.

This is the tocay cut out and ready to sew. I am using needleturn appliqué and a fine silk thread in dark grey to stitch it.


















A close up photo showing the detail and stitching around the feet.

After almost two weeks without rain and all the leaves starting to fall off the trees and the grass dieing, we have had two big thunderstorms in the night and early morning rain. The garden is soaking it all up and it has saved me haivng to go out with the hose and water everything.