Summer Grass Quilt

We have a gorgeous field with tall grasses behind our yard. It's occasionally used for a cow pasture, but I've seen many kinds of wildlife there. For me, looking out the window is like having a landscape wall painting that's always changing. 

Last summer I wanted a wall hanging quilt  to fill in between my patriotic July quilt and my autumn quilt. I designed a pieced quilt with tall uneven grasses like the field. My design originally had very straight, equally spaced pieced lines for the grass with applique flowers and bugs and a pieced sun.

I changed the design a few times, but wasn't happy with the grass piecing and  the curved sun pieces, I decided to drop the flowers and the sun and go for a simplified design. I used a single background 25.75 x 20 inch piece of faintly striped yellow fabric. Then I used four colors of 3/8 inch grosgrain ribbon for the grass. I used the stripes of the background design to align the ribbons. I then machine sewed down the middle of each ribbon to place it. This also gave the ribbons a wavy look. I decided I didn't like the equally spaced grass and added more in between the some of the existing grass blades. Everything but the grass is hand sewn.

I'm including close up shots since the details are hard to catch from a distance.

I used scrap pieces of black cotton knit fabric for the base of the bee, fly, and ladybug, then buttons for body color on the bee and fly. The bee's stripes are made with embroidery floss. The inch worm was the easiest with buttons and buttons alone.

 I quilted around every blade of grass, without stitching them down so the sides stick out a bit to give dimension. I used yellow quilting thread on the background and black thread for the bee and fly flight pattern stitches.

 The ladybug and butterfly wings are rough edge applique. the butterfly's body has layered buttons and the wings are quilted with white thread. The antennae are embroidered in black.

 

The finished quilt: Summer Grass

 

Next time: patriot pieced quilt.