I have been thinking about what I would do for the Second Quarter Challenge since Lyn posted about it in April. We don’t have seascapes in Montana where I live and I usually base my artwork on the Montana landscapes. Then I found a book to help with my watercolor painting attempts and found a wonderful photo of a watercolor by Zoltan Szabo’s. The book is his “70 Favorite Watercolor Techniques“. I couldn’t find a photo online to share with you of the watercolor painting.

Here’s the wool layout. I used preyarn for the trees and needled felted it a bit in places to tack it down. I then wet felted the piece. I didn’t full it very hard as the plan was to add stitching and hang it on the wall.

Here it as after felting. Now to add some machine stitching.

I used a dark brown thread and free motion machine stitched the smaller branches. I also added some texture to the rest of the tree. I then needle felted the small flower bits for the fireweed in the foreground.

I then started adding stitching to complete the flowers. I used a variety of pink threads. In the center photo, you’ll see that I added dark pink stitching and then tried out some prefelt leaves. I then needle felted the leaves in place (right photo) so that I could stitch over top of the prefelt without it shifting around too much.

And here’s the completed piece. The center photo shows the backing I chose for the piece. It is off to the framers to get a black frame.

Thanks for the challenge Lyn and Annie! I enjoyed creating this seascape. Now to come up with a good name. Suggestions?