Finished 'Sheep in the snow' art quilt

What a job finding somewhere to hang and photograph this quilt. Even with all the photography equipment we have it has been very difficult barring putting up a dark backdrop big enough. My walls are a (now) off white which didn't help. Anyway I have done the best I can and hope it gives a reasonably good impression of the finished piece.

I really enjoy stitching these art quilts and I think I prefer - for me - painting and quilting as opposed to piecing fabrics. This has a few drawbacks as I have to test the paint colours all the time to see how they look on the fabric before putting it onto the actual piece fabric. I found that the white paint over the grey made it look yellowish rather than the white I was wanting. I used several different white paints but there was no difference - the grey had its effect under the white. When I created my thread paintings, the backgrounds were painted in such the same way, but much of that was machined over with little of the painted area left to see. With the quilting, a lot more of the painted area is still visible. I can see I will be learning more about paint and colours if I do more of these painted quilts although I think this particular subject in these colours wasn't the easiest to interpret - but I like challenges.

I did expect and found that they use a lot of thread. I now have to replace three of my greys which have run out. I used a mixture of metallics, rayon and polyester threads to help give more depth and highlights. I kept the sheep very stylised and from a distance- which is the best way to view the quilt - they work well.

The most densely stitched area is the top third which is the woods and trees at the back. I used my favoured vermicelli stitch (some call it stipple stitch) to fill between the outlined features.

The foreground area was less densely stitched.

I have to admire those quilters who create large quilts. They are not easy to handle and stitch using a normal machine although I expect those who make quilts to sell use more specialised machines and beds. I won't be doing that as I like to do so many different techniques and mediums - art quilts being only one of them. I have done lots of quilting within much of my other work but this is the first large art quilt.

Look forward to doing more of them.

Cheers everyone.