Brave New World

When I first read the challenge was titled Brave New World I had no idea what I wanted to do. After mulling over the theme for a few days I started thinking of depression and how it affects us and those around us. My quilt was going to be based on the blackness of depression and the gradual lightening of spirit when one gets help to overcome the struggle and face a 'bright new world.'

All those ideas went out the window when the bush fires hit our area on February 7th and we had 5 weeks of constant alerts to the fire threat.

Driving around the area after the fires it was amazing to see how quickly some of the plants and tree ferns had started to shoot. After all the destruction these little plants were forcing their way through the ash etc to face a 'brave new world.'

I based my quilt on a photo I took at Drouin West. Most of the quilt was made with scraps left from previous projects.

The construction of the quilt:

Sketch of the photo

Transferring the background design onto freezer paper.

Quilted back ground before adding the insert of the enlarged new growth. The greenery in the small rectangle was free motion machine stitched.

The insert, is double the size of the original and the greenery is made from hand dyed scraps and vliesofixed onto the quilt then stitched, again using free motion.

The final product.