Denali Merchandise

In 2005 I served as an Artist-in-Residence at Denali National Park in Alaska.  As part of the residency, I donated a piece of artwork inspired by my stay to the park which they display at the visitors' center.

Just this summer, they have taken the image of my piece Threading Through the Gravel Bars, East Fork of the Toklat, and made merchandise that is for sale at the gift shop in the park.  Pictured here are a puzzle, a card, and a magnetic bookmark.  There is also a refrigerator magnet but, unfortunately (or fortunately!), that was sold out when I ordered these.

All proceeds from the sale of this merchandise go to Alaska Geographic, a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting people to Alaska's wildlands.  While the items are not listed on their website yet, they can be obtained by calling the gift shop directly through the number on the site.

Definately done!

 The sewing, trimming, quilting, binding and everything else is done, even the hanging sleeves.

I'm calling it White Trees and, to give you a sense of the scale of the work, it measures approximately 45" h x 52" w.

I like to work in a little larger scale so that the fabric patterns can be shown off.  As you might be able to see in the detail image of the tree, those fabrics are on quite a large scale with 3"-4" flower repeats.

Now to think about the next project.....

Done, sort of...

The fabric choices are all done and pinned to the wall.  They've been stared at and thought about and slept on and I don't see any changes I want to make.

Since I piece my quilts together, this is the time to take care of any doubts about a fabric choice before I start sewing.

Getting there

I'm really happy with the way the foliage is turning out - the yellow greens of the main tree stand out nicely.

Now for the trickiest part.  The background is a bit undecided with me.  I have a few ideas but I neede to wait and see what the trees looked like before I could commit the rest of the fabrics.  At this point I will be auditioning them one at a time and very carefully seeing how they affect the balance of the whole.

Decision time

The pattern is on my design wall and I'm making my fabric choices.  Starting with the easy decisions, I've pinned up the tree trunks and have started on the background foliage.  I want the leaves on the background trees to be a darker green so the lighter colors of the focus tree will really pop.

Getting it down on paper

A vertical piece or a horizontal?  Maybe a forest but I like the idea of one larger, main tree to be the focal point.  And, if that's the case, what shape best suits that purpose?

I'm sketching around trying to decide those questions with very small (5" x 7") and very rough (as you can see) sketches. 

I'm also trying to decide where to place the lights and darks and how and where I might use those fabrics I pulled out earlier.

Thinking about a new piece

Sometimes I feel the need to work with bright, intense color and bold patterns.  I found this great, large scale fabric at the bottom of the picture that suggests a forest background to me.

Even better, the circle-patterned fabric at the lower right seems to fit right in this color scheme I've been pulling.  I always enjoy including circles and dots into a piece.

Off to sketch a few ideas down now that I've got the key fabrics chosen.