My friend had a friend Bonnie, who wanted to learn how to make an art quilt. We arranged for her and another one of our friends to come to my friend’s to make an art quilt Oct. 4-6, 2024. She invited me to come also to help. Bonnie had seen a photo of a winter scene in the aspens and a cardinal in the background and they wanted to do that. So, in order to help, I decided to start my pattern early, and had already figured out a design that I wanted to use. I had already picked out my fabrics, sewn down some of the background as a visual for them. I had some aspen or birch tree fabric that I had cut out and laid on top to show how that would go. I did not leave the aspen trucks in that position. I let them cut out and use that fabric for their quilts as well.

When they got there, my friend Patti drew up a pattern on freezer paper to show them how the background is constructed and sewn. The other two girls copied the pattern onto another piece of freezer paper to use. They did not find “just the right fabrics” that they wanted, so I invited them to my house the next morning to go through my white fabrics. They picked out eight fabrics they wanted to try and took them to Patti’s.

I picked out a “water” looking fabric and finished sewing down the lower portion of the quilt, making it ready to move around the aspen trees on top of the background until I had it the way I wanted. I ironed them down, then stitched them. I then used black paint to add little side branches on the trunks, and painted some shadows in the snow from the trees. The photo that Bonnie had wanted to use had a tiny red cardinal in the background.

I wanted to use some photos I had taken of my cardinals outside my office window. My husband and I both LOVE watching the bright red of them in the winter against the bright white snow. So, instead of just a spot of red in the background, I wanted to showcase a cardinal. I posterized a couple of my photos that I might use and made patterns. I really enjoyed one of my photos with the little cardinal and his tail in the air, so I enlarged him and put him in the foreground on the ground, as I see them so often at home foraging for seeds around the feeders. I liked one of the photos that I had taken of a cardinal flying down to the feeders, so I reduced that one and painted him a little black branch to land on further back in the quilt. I felt I needed to add a third spot of red to allow the eye to follow through the quilt, but could not realistically find a spot for something. So, I decided to make a tiny red flange binding around the quilt to draw your eye around the quilt.