Woodland – Summer’s Ending

My inspiration in the first depiction of woodland comes from the current season here, where summer is almost over, but autumn us not yet showing it’s colours and character. The leaves are starting to dry and lose their bright green colours, and the fruits and seeds are forming.

The background is transfer printed cotton, and more transfer printing used to give an impression of tree trunks. Commercial stamps and fabric paint are used to give some leaf shapes in the middle distance giving depth to the tree canopy. I used machine quilting to echo the shapes between the tree trunks, and to include more leaf shapes in the ‘canopy’. I wanted to quilt before adding the foreground details, because I wanted the foreground to stand out in almost a 3D effect.

I cut leaf shapes from a mixture of hand dyed and commercial fabric for the leaves in the foreground, and painted the edges with gold acrylic paint to hint at the way they are losing their summer colours. These were then hand-stitched appliqued fairly loosely to give motre depth. I added needle-felted acorn shapes.

The undergrowth beneath the trees mainly represents blackberry brambles, with leaves cut from hand dyed fabric and some transfer coloured newspaper. Again the edges are oainted gold, and the leaves are appliqued loosely. I added beaded blackberries, and hand-stitching for the bramble stalks, and for some dried flower stalks.

Detail views: