Design Concept

Confabulation: An exchange of viewpoints or advice for the purpose of finding a solution to a problem.
Confab: Consult, confer, discuss, talk, parley, counsel, advise, deliberate, debate

individual bird drawings	This design began as a series of pencil drawings of herons and cranes on paper.
final line drawing	These were scanned into Corel Draw and arranged into a single design.
painting in progress	Each bird was digitally painted in a different color or hue, using many different shades from light to dark, to create luminosity and depth. The colors of the birds form a color wheel with warm colors on the right side and cool colors on the left.

Two sets of colors form the watery background. One set comes from a photo of one of my dye-painted fabrics and the other is a subtle gradation from yellow at the bottom to purple at the top, contrasting with the color flow of the birds.  

Each individual feather was quilted in a traditional quilter's feather pattern, in contrasting shades. The background was quilted in long looping meander patterns suggesting water. The back is a one-of-a-kind, dye-painted fabric.

The digital printing was done by Spoonflower in two sections, which were pieced together to form the 61” wide quilt top. The matching binding strips were printed at the same time.

This is a very large quilt, so I used my clamp and pully system to support the weight while I was doing the free-motion quilting.

click for larger image

For free instructions for making a simple version of this clamping system CLICK HERE.