Inspiration: my inspiration comes from the country where my roots are, and were I live now. Lithuanian landscape is very close to my heart, it is beautiful, and it changes with the season.

We have no mountains and not even many hills. We have lakes and rivers and still 30% of the territory is covered by forests. Where ever you are in Lithuania, you actually always are close to the forest or at least can see it on the horizon.

When I chose Lithuania for this year’s country challenge, I gave a promise that I will be using traditional Lithuanian textiles, mostly linen. I am going to avoid commercially dyed fabrics as much as I can, and do as much hand work as possible.

Following these rules I had no other choice as to make Lithuanian winter landscape. For the sky I used unbleached linen. The distant brownish horizon made from eco dyed linen. For the white snow I layered bleached white linen with the white linen gauze loosely placed on top of it. Only for the frozen lake I used commercially dyed piece.

All layers are not sewn together, just placed overlapping each other. The snowflakes in the sky, the trees in the horizon and dry grasses sticking out from the snow are hand embroidered through all three layers of the quilt sandwich. This way the embroidery serves as quilting, and no other quilting is done. The embroidery is also done with linen yarns.