Salt and Sand Blog Hop

 Today's my day to participate in the Salt and Sand blog hop :).

As soon as I heard the theme I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I took a trip to Flowerpot Island at Tobermory, ON a few years ago with my family (you know, back when we could do things like hang out with family and go places). I took a picture that I knew I wanted to reproduce the second I saw it, but I felt like I didn't have the knowledge, the skills, or the confidence to do that and do it justice.

Then I started doing quilt challenges with my friend. We started doing them about a year ago. We would pick a quilt technique on a Friday night and aimed to each produce something by Sunday night. The only criteria was something with a perimeter of 20-30". We wanted to get out of our comfort zones, get comfortable with a little less planning, and be a little more artistic. You can see all the things we've made up until now on at my Covid Quilt Challenge Round-Up.

Doing these challenges made me feel like I could finally revisit this, and signing up for this blog hop gave me the push I needed. Plus I felt like the colours really fit the theme.

I started by piecing the background. The sharp and distinct changes in the water colour are common for the area and are the original reason I took the picture. I wanted to capture those distinct colour changes and felt like piecing would be the best way to do that.

After that I added the rocks, clouds, and white water as embellishment, made my quilt sandwich, and started stitching. First I went around the added bits. Then I quilted the various backgrounds, adding pebbles, churning water, waves and wind (and it was windy that day).

The final step was to add in the branches. I decided to use confetti to do this. I already owned netting, which I bought inspirationally knowing I wanted to do some sort of project with netting (but nothing specific in mind), which I used to encase the confetti bits. At first I cut the confetti into triangles, but I learned the hard way that the holes in the netting were bigger than my triangles :D. That's when I started cutting them into strips, leaving them long enough to not fall through the holes. I went from a very manual cutting process to just running the rotary cutter back and forth quickly and very close together. I used a variety of green and black batiks, stirred them together in a container and sprinkled them around the netting. Then I carefully transferred it to the sewing machine, stitched around the outside, and then just all-over stitched back and forth across the inside. Next time I would do it in two smaller parts instead of one large one, because it was hard to keep it flat on the machine so that the confetti didn't all fall out or to one end as I worked.

 

I cut out various bits for the ends of the branches, and then used green and brown thread to create the branches leading up to the needles. I filled in a few more branches, and then decided it needed more needles. Some I could add to already existing branches, and some I needed to do more thread work for.

I knew that the back wasn't going to look ideal with all that stitching on the back, so I decided to use a busier background to hide some of that. As I was looking through my stash I found the back fabric I knew I wanted to use: loons. I have a childhood quillow that was made from this fabric, as loons were one of my favourite animals. Being from southern Ontario, I don't have a lot of ocean experience; our water comes in the form of the Great Lakes. And the first time I saw a loon was probably in the same body of water as the picture was taken in, so it seemed fitting to use. (I know lakes don't quite fit the salt and sand theme perfectly, but I figured I could fudge it a bit.)

Lastly, I faced the quilt. I'm so happy with how it turned out, and am amazed at how much I've grown in my skill and confidence in the last year to be able to produce this. I will need to find somewhere to display this.

Thanks for stopping by for the blog hop :). Hope to see you again.

Don't forget to check out the other blogs today and all the other days. I'm sure there's going to be lots of wonderful things to see.

March 22
Creatin' in the Sticks
Selina Quilts
That Fabric Feeling
Days Filled With Joy
Elizabeth Coughlin Designs
Karen's Korner
Homespun Hannah's Blog
Crafts and Math
 
March 23
MooseStashQuilting
Life in the Scrapatch
Food for Thought
For The Love Of Geese
Becky’s Adventures in Quilting and Travel
Karrin’s Crazy World
Sew Many Yarns
Kathy's Kwilts and More
 
March 24
Ms P Designs USA
DayBrook Designs
Vroomans Quilts
Kathleen McMusing
Quilt Schmilt
The Darling Dogwood
Daughters of Dorinda
Annie’s Musings
 
March 25
Quiltscapes
Beaquilter
Stitchin At Home
The Joyful Quilter
Scrapdash
Freckled Fox Quiltery
Quilts Fabric and Thread Tales
Words & Stitches
 
March 26
Just Let Me Quilt
Websterquilt
Quilting Gail
Samelia's Mum
Quilt Fabrication
Little Penguin Quilts
Just Sew Quilter
Inflorescence