free-motion trees

I received some questions about how my trees were created, so I thought you might like to see another picture that I took before I washed out the stabilizer. The how-to instruction below is a copy of what I had posted in the art quilt class that I'm taking. One thing I forgot to mention, is that you need to make sure that you have the threads locking with others (you can stitch a grid in the area you will embroider to help hold it together).

My trees were free motion embroidered on Romeo, which is a super heavy weight water soluble stabilizer. I drew what I thought I'd like with a sharpie on the stabilizer, and then hooped the stabilizer and stitched with lots of thread, changing the colors from darkest to lightest. It's kind of like scribbling with colored pencils to fill them in, except you're holding a hoop and stitching with the machine. The trees were still on the stabilizer in the photo that I posted, so today they had a nice bath in very warm water to wash it out, and now they're drying. Once they're dry, I'll take another photo with them on top of the quilt, but I'm seriously considering cutting it into two sections, putting the two trees that are close together towards one side and the other tree on the other (but opposite of the way they are now). They are not wide enough to fit all the way across (would have when I was going to do the quilt in a portrait format), and I think they will cover the valley between the hills if I don't cut it. Anyway, I'll find out when it's dry.