Missouri Art Quilt

On Instagram, there was a swap (Make Yourself At Home swap) that not all the participants sent their mini quilt as they promised, so “angels” were needed. I stepped up because I had an idea and wanted to try it. The swap was to make a mini quilt that represented where you live.

I took a photo in the fall of the road on the way to our house, and I wanted to try to recreate it in quilt form!

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A quick dig through my stash yielded some great fabrics that would work for leaves!

I quickly sketched out what I wanted to do, and just dove in!

I sewed some fabrics together to be the background. I originally cut trees out of some RealTree Camo fabric, but I didn't like the way they looked, so I scrapped them.

Instead, I cut tree and limb shapes out of brown fabric and top stitched them to the background with dark brown thread. I sewed over them many times so the stitches would mimic tree bark.

Then I used a rotary cutter to cut batik fabrics into 1/4” squares to make “leaves.” I kept the different colors sorted in small plastic cups. Using my darning foot, I sprinkled some “leaves” on the quilt and quilted over them to hold them in place.

I did this just to the quilt top (no batting or backing fabric), using small swirls to stitch over the confetti-like pieces just as if I was free-motion quilting.

Once I liked how many leaves there were, I added batting and backing fabric.

I free-motion quilted a pebble design onto the road, stitched along the sides of all the trees, and added just a bit of quilted swirls among the trees.

The quilt finished around 18" square. After completing the quilt, I felt like it needed something more, but couldn’t put my finger on it. While working on the quilt, several deer kept frequenting our yard. I decided the quilt needed a deer added!

The day after completely finishing the quilt, I cut out a deer silhouette and ironed it onto the road using Heat-N-Bond.

I mailed the quilt along with some extras (including the mini mini quilt) to Florida!

I hope the recipient enjoys this quilty peek into the country life in Missouri!

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