Design Concept

Branches 3 began with a very loose hand drawn sketch of organic shapes that look like branches. It was drawn directly on the touch screen of my Microsoft Surface Design computer. I turned my line drawing into separate shapes which could be filled with color and pattern. I photographed two fabrics that I painted with dye and used the images to fill the shapes in my drawing. I shifted the images and colors around until I liked the way the whole composition looked. I turned it into a bitmap, designed matching strips for the binding and sent the whole image to Spoonflower to be printed on cotton fabric. Many different colors of polyester and acrylic thread were used in the free-motion quilting.

This is a companion piece to Branches #2, which is the same design, but the colors are the compliments/opposites on the color wheel, and the size is much smaller. In order to have this design printed by Spoonflower, it had to be divided into three sections, which took up just over six yards. Since I had to pay for the whole seventh yard anyway, I filled it with the smaller version of the design and had both printed at the same time.