Reindeer and Spruce

My flora and fauna design is inspired by reindeer and Norway spruce trees (and is probably influenced by the fact that winter has arrived in my part of the world!).

I have used a mixture of commercial and hand-dyed fabric in a ‘loose’ type of log-cabin design around a central panel of batik fabric that ‘spoke’ to me of spruce branches. I used colours that reminded me of winter and ice. I hand-quilted the central panel using a pale green silk thread. Instead of depicting a whole reindeer I chose to use only the antler shapes and to repeat these, so that they give the inpression of a moving, browisng herd (in my head, anyway). I fused these to the backing and handstiched them down Finally I completed the quilting by hand-stitching a representation of snowflakes over the surface and around the antlers. I used a wider binding than I normally do because I felt that it fitted better with the log-cabin design.

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