Tuscan Landscape with Karen Eckmeier

hi I'm Kerry Nick Meyer I'm a fiber artist and quilter and today I'd like to introduce you to an accidental landscape inspired by a scene in Tuscany now accidental landscape that sounds a little scary but don't worry I've done all the figuring for you I figured out the colors and lines and the proportions and the values so that no matter what you do as far as cutting your strips they have so many different ways of going together accidentally to create a great scene so let's look at our little Tuscany scene over here it's going to consist of a 9 inch by 4 inch piece of sky and then we're going to have a nice golden color here we're going to have a nice warm earth and then two greens a light green and a dark green so those are the warm colors of Tuscany so again these are 9 by 4 that's what we start with now our next step is we're going to cut a gentle curve in those freeform okay so we have our 9 by fours and it's time to cut a very gentle curve into the top of these and we're going to use our rotary cutter if you haven't cut a curve freeform before close the blade and just try a couple times see how it feels to cut a curve again very gentle once you're ready we just will just cut into there and I would suggest saving these little pieces and I'll show you what to do with those later I'm going to do the same thing with each of my other squares ok now we're ready to iron the quarter inch over it's there's the right side of the fabric wrong side we're going to iron it about a quarter-inch toward the backside ok so it might be bubbly on that side but as long as it looks smooth here and I've done the same thing to my other pieces they're all slightly different curved okay and now we're ready to layer okay now we're ready to layer we start with our sky notice we didn't cut any curve on the sky the rule for landscapes is that you have lighter values in the background so in the dark in the foreground we have darker going to lighter so let's follow that rule for now and start that way going to take our lighter golden color here I'm going to just cover the bottom raw edge there of the sky and I'm going to put my next pieces up I can move it left or right but for right now I'm going to just put those up there like so and that's the accidental part it really you know it's not a bad composition that way it could be a little longer let's try a couple other combinations just because I said that lighter should be in the background sometimes depending on the color of my sky I might decide that I want the darker one in the background and then I just put these up here like so it's best to talk to somebody while you're doing this and just let the pieces fall where they will that is the accidental part and here we have a cute little scene again so at one point you have to decide that it's ready and then we are going to pin it okay so I've decided on these strips that this is how I want to end the pinning which you can tell that I started a pin goes in it goes perpendicular to our pressed edges and notice that the point comes out I want to see where those points are so that I don't run over them when I am top stitching okay now we know that we have enough pins in there if I can pick it up and the pins don't fall out and notice that we don't have anything on the back of here it's all just the strips there's no batting or a piece of fabric so no accidental pinning now we're ready to top stitch and now I'm ready to top stitch and when I top stitch for the accidental landscapes I like to do it an eighth of an inch away from the folded edge and that gives a little pleat a little texture to our scene now this is my Bernina I have a once a foot on I'm going to use the inside edge of the toe either the left side of the right side is a guide so you'll see if I put my presser foot down I can adjust it so the inside edge there is lined up or on the reverse depending on which way you like to sew I can line it up so that the inside is lined up with there I'm going to stitch the whole thing with a gold thread and I'm ok with that if that bothers you you can change color to match your fabric I'm going to start here at the bottom row take my pins out top stitch each of these layers and I'm going to do that with the rest of the layers okay now I have done my top stitching this is another example I've changed the values we've got dark in the back here on this one so we turn the piece over and the only part that I need to trim is if I can fit my hands underneath there if it's flapping in the wind so to speak I'm going to just trim those little pieces away about a quarter inch from the line of stitching okay there's not much there now I save those little pieces to create accidental accidental landscapes which I'll show you later now now this thing needs to be squared up okay so now I've squared up my scene and now I know where to put my trees in my villa because I have a squared piece and I can find a one either one of the sections of thirds picture tic-tac-toe grid and wherever they meet would be a great place to put our villa or our trees now first of all how do we build our villa now here is our villa okay and it consists of this is a one in half an inch by three-quarter inch piece of tan and this is a half inch by half inch and we're going to cut a red triangle and we're going to cut one that's got a slanted roof and then a straight side okay and to assemble our building I'm going to take a little rocks and glue paste it and I'm going to just run it down there and I'm going to attach my wouldn't be needed building was so easy huh I'm going to put that there and I'm going to put my roof tops on okay this is quick building of houses or villas there's my little house and then I'll add windows and doors with a micro pen or some a pen that's good for fabric that's not going to bleed so that's how we add our window door now for trees Tuscany scenes have these typical there's wonderful cypress trees so we've cut we have smaller ones which are going to measure about one and a half inches tall and a large one that's measures about three inches tall so where are we going to put that I think over here up on top of this hillside it would show up nicely and then I'll arrange my three cypress trees going toward like it's along the driveway notice that a tweezers come in handy here they have a life of their own these things and then the little taller tree down about in that area and I would glue those in place with my Roxanne's glue baste it notice just a little comes out the idea is you just hold it down your fabric and press down so you don't have to pick up each piece so I would glue those in place okay so now we've added our focal points we have our villa we have our cypress trees on there they're glued in place and then we're ready to add borders and we're ready to do the quilting I'm not going to demonstrate that at this point but I'm going to show you what the quilting looks like and some of the different variations here we have the very simple scene now when you go to quilt if you quilt in lines that kind of go against the curve that way it looks like you have your olive groves or your olive tree groves rather or the vineyards that gives the illusion of those lines so very very simple quilting in each of the sections so that's one variation here we have one where I added a photo transfer from an actual villa and included it into the scene we have the same basic elements that we've that I've demonstrated but now we have a little photo realism in there another example here we have some grapes some vineyards in there right on the bottom of the picture here and different um we've got a double border here this one we did just a single and it noticed that it's always good to bring an element of your landscape out into your border let's check one other one out here this one has a hilltop village it was actually photograph and that's imposed on to another distant hill and some very abstract sunflowers that are in the foreground and last but not least remember saving all those little scraps if you say those those will accidentally go together to create another scene so this is how I created this scene accidentally thanks for joining me and I hope you have fun creating landscapes accidentally if you need some more information or you feel like you need me at home to help you I have written a book about it accidental landscapes and I have several patterns where you can do coastlines autumn hills golf courses ski slopes city skylines a range of ten different patterns where I've done all the figuring for you so that you can do it accidentally on your own bye for now

Channel: Karen Eckmeier

Views: 62,187

Rating: 4.9640989 out of 5

Keywords: quilt, fiber art, landscape in fabric, Tuscany (Italian Region), Quilted Lizard Fiber Art Studio, Karen Eckmeier, BERNINA, Accidental Landscapes

Id: ObTxKp7U9VE

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2015