I had a wonderful sales month at the 4 Ravens Gallery in Missoula and sold four pieces in the space of 30 days! Yay, happy dance and then… I suddenly realized that the gallery only had 2 small pieces left. I needed more work and it’s summertime and I don’t want to miss the tourist season.

I found I had a multicolored piece of nuno felt big enough to split into two pieces. You can see the edge of the second piece on the right. My trees always seem to sell quickly so of course, more trees it is. I found a piece of handdyed fabric that I had used as “matte” fabric and it was perfect for making tree trunks. I worked out a configuration of trunks that I liked.

Then I hand stitched the trunks in place and tried out some cheesecloth as foliage. I had created a piece before with cheesecloth and tried that idea on the left. It looked too Dr. Seuss in these colors. So I chopped up smaller pieces and thought that would work better.

So I added more, spread the pieces out a bit and added some cheesecloth to the foreground for undergrowth.

Here it is before I stitched it all down. The cheesecloth moves around easily so it changes as I stitch but hopefully, that makes it more organic and less regular.

Here is the piece after all the stitching is complete. The funny thing I noticed is that there are several areas that look like shadows in the foreground from the tree trunks. They weren’t planned but I guess I must have noticed them subconsciously, as they seem to work perfectly. I’m calling this one Transitions.

I dyed a piece of muslin in dark burnt orange for the “matte” fabric, laced it to a backing and took it to the framers.

Here’s the piece framed. I have worked on two other pieces and traded around some pieces that I had at a gallery in Kalispell, so I will have 5 pieces to take to Missoula in a week or so.

In other exciting news, I have a new online class that will be starting on August 21st. Click here to learn more about the class.