Zion Narrow Continuing - Adding Grasses

Progress so far - 

 This short blog is just to show you that I have done a little bit of work on my quilt. I've been teaching this week and came back from classes with a bad headache - lasted for days. Yuck. This is why there is hardly anything to show you today... 

Free motion embroidered grasses and shrubby shapes

 Before I start on the trees I needed to create some background foliage. Most of it looks like grasses from the photograph (see last couple of blogs, I didn't bother to add it to this one.)  

What you are seeing in the above shot is 2 layers of AquaMelt stabilizer with 2 layers of tulle sandwiched between. This technique works best if you try to match the background of the grassy patch with a tulle color. (Which I did not do in the above sample. This is a case of 'Do what I say not what I do, lol.')

I started off by laying down a foundation of darker thread and then added lighter thread on top. 

This is what I came up with -

Grassy shrub

I didn't fill this in thickly because I wanted the background to show through a bit. Plus, when I quilt this piece I'll be adding more thread to the shape. 

One patch tucked behind the rock

 For the small grassy patches in the canyon walls I just scribble stitched and cut out small shapes. I also made some clumps for here and there on the beach - 

Free motion embroidered grass clumps

Grasses on the canyon walls

 The next thing to do is to fuse all the pieces of this landscape together. I'm building it on Pellon EK130 but this stuff doesn't seal any edges very well. To minimize the thready look of raw edge applique I'm going to use Liquid Stitch. This is a fusible glue - it goes on very thickly so I smear it with my finger. 

Liquid stitch and some fabric I'll be using to make the trees.

 If you look at the 2 photos below, I'm showing you the large pieces of applique. I'm going to smear glue on the wrong side of these pieces. Once it dries I'll press them using a fiber glass pressing sheet and the glue will smoosh out over the edges of the applique. 

Then I'll trim off the thready edges and excess glue, arrange the pieces so they overlap nicely and press them together and down on the Pellon foundation. I love this glue. No thready raw edges! 

I'll be smearing glue on the wrong side of the edges of the applique

Smearing glue on these edges - 

 Here is the small part of the upper canyon wall on the left. I've pressed it to the fiber glass pressing sheet and now I can cut off those thready edges - 

This piece is done and ready to go -

 The last pic for today is just a closeup of the water  and the foliage as you enter the canyon in the back.  The water still isn't quite right, but it isn't as turquoise as it was - 

And that's it for me today. I'll finish gluing all the patches down and start on the trees next week.

Happy Quilting to you!