Adding the forest foliage

I took a look at my fabric stash for fabrics that suggested (to me at least!) pine tree foliage, branches, etc.

I did not want to add any strong green color as I am aiming for a fairly monochromatic color scheme, so that narrowed my choices down a bit.  Seems like every perfect pattern I found was in a bright green. 

I finally found these three fabrics in my stash that are very muted browns and grays and in patterns that were exactly what I wanted.  I really love using plaids and this particular one I was able to "fussy" cut along the defined linear lines to suggest more branches in the overhead foliage.

I'm very happy with the end result, looking at the pieces pinned on my design wall - just the effect that I wanted!

Auditioning

It's fun to work through the easy decisions on any project - the decisions that just seem to come spontaneously and flow naturally.  So far I've done that by pinning the tree fabrics and that touch of blue sky to my design wall.  Starting to fill in the rest takes a little more thought.

So I audition the fabrics by pinning them to the work-in-progress.  Then I sit back at a distance and try to figure out if that foliage fabric is too dark of a value?  Is the green too bright and oddly intense?  Is there too much rusty orange in that one ground fabric?  

Building up the trees

 

Now that I've pinned up my bright bit of sky, I want to concentrate on my trees. 

 They are going to be the darkest value on my quilt and the focal point.  Bearing that in mind, I want to get them on the design wall next as everything else in this piece will need to work well with those tree fabrics.  And picking the tree fabrics will be fairly straightforward as well as they are all going to consist of a few varying shades of dark browns.

 So I can get a lot of different pieces on the design wall fairly quickly and start seeing things take shape!

 

 
 
 
 
 

My version of an assembly line

Piecing is a fairly time consuming process so I try to be as efficient as possible.  One way I do this is to cut out multiple pieces of fabric at a time.  With the fabrics ironed and laid out around my studio, I'll make my selections and place the appropriate piece of freezer paper template on the chosen fabric.

When I've made all the selections I can feel confident making, I'll take each fabric and iron on all the template pieces for that particular fabric.  Then I'll go to

 the next fabric, laying it over the previous one on the ironing board, and repeat the process.

Then I can take each piece of fabric off the ironing board, one at a time, and trace and cut out my fabrics.  And the best part? Pinning the fabric pieces to the design wall!