the frost project - updated apr 25

(updated below, april 21)

i thought it might be nice to have a separate page devoted solely to this project... i am using tags etc. on the blog posts so if you click on "the frost queen" on the side bar you will get all related posts - this just might be a little easier to get through..... sort of a "reader's digest condensed version" of the whole...

this idea has been a long time in the making and with the help of karen ruane and her "alchemy" class, i am finally beginning

 i see much of this in my mind already, which may or may not be a good thing... if what is there is workable it will be good, but i hope it doesn't close my eyes to all the possibilities... i want a blank canvas, at least here, at the beginning....

i'm placing her in a forest and i see the trees with an architect's eye

they are tall and strong and the canopy curves, creating a cathedral-type space, nature's structure

(i could even place an ice palace behind her... we'll see...)

even though it's winter, there are seed pods and grasses that can mimic flowers, stylized perhaps? 

it can't all be trees.... there needs to be softness as well, some undergrowth, and then snowbanks - does that mean a path???

there must be some kind of wrought iron - it begs for it... can you not see it now with the heavy white hoar frost glittering and the designs so beautifully rendered - she really does make everything she touches beautiful

and as she is a queen, she'll need a crown - there's too much scope for snowflake and crystals in the design of one to leave it out - a crown is a must, as is a wand

she weaves her magic not with a loom, but a wand

her world is icy white, silver, brown/black tree trunks and iron, blue and purple shadows on the snow and heaven knows what for the pond

the frost delicately etching the branches and stems

and snow crystals everywhere - large and small and every size and shape in between - i know i can't do them all but i'll sketch as many as i can think up and then choose

it's time now to turn to the sketchbook... many of these images have been glued in place and i am ready to begin seeing where they take me, incorporating some of what i've written here

i'll update this each time i do a blog post, adding more pictures and dialogue

letting the story unfold

and unfold it has....

march 23, 2013

the background is finally pieced and the stream is appliqued in place - this part took a fair bit longer than i expected

i've never crazy quilted anything like this before - it's bigger and it's a scene and both those factors have given me much grief

once i had the background pieced i basted the whole thing to piece of muslin - this will provide some much needed stability for the stitching and embellishing to come

today i pin-basted tissue paper to the far right of pieced background and began sketching the tree... this was harder than i thought it would be - at first i kept tearing the tissue paper, and then i wasn't happy with my sketching so there was a fair amount of erasing happening....

once i was happy with part of it i started stitching, then sketched more, then stitched more

the picture above was taken when pretty well all of the stitching was done

areas i wasn't sure of, or just couldn't get them looking right, were finally left alone
i'll deal with them as i start filling the tree in

i'm pretty happy with it over-all but will wait to see it in the light of day

above, you can see the back side of the piece - not terribly neat, but not terribly messy either

here i begin to tear away the tissue
it came off easier than i expected and it was exciting to see the stitching on the sky section - it stands out from the blue nicely

i'm not sure about how straight the trunk came out - it was supposed to, as all the trees i saw had straight trunks.... as i lay in the threads for the trunk i can rough up the edges if this continues to bother me - i keep telling myself i will be able to fix most things with stitch!
(i hope!)

fading in where it lays over the "hill" fabric

and here it is with all the tissue gone

the light was already going when i took this so the sheen of the fabric really comes through -
in daylight it isn't as noticeable....  i'm not sure this will matter in the long run

 and now, through the magic of photography, i can see the trunk is way too long so tomorrow i will unpick some of the bottom and then stitch the root section

there are supposed to be three trees, at least that's what is on the sketch.... once i remove some of the lower trunk i will try to make some final decisions about the "ice palace"

in my mind's eye, it's too big 

(this picture is deceiving as it's only a detail shot - the full-view photo didn't turn out so i'll try for that tomorrow as well)

sometimes i call it the mud hut because of it's flattish top

so i may applique some sky fabrics over and around it, to make it smaller and little more elegant... less like a hut

i am of the opinion that most of what i mess up can be fixed with applique and stitch!

april 4th

game off...

i worked steady on this for several days getting the upper branches re-stitched with one strand of embroidery thread and one of silver metallic...big job... i do like how they look though and i think the trees will pay back whatever effort and time and i put into them

then i stopped - i feel as if i have somehow got away from what i originally wanted - it's way too scenic and far less abstract than i had in my mind

trying to think back to how i strayed off course and it must have been when we went to calgary and i saw the stream, wending it's way back into the forest (yes, wend)

there was never going to be a stream until then

but i like it and i don't want to get rid of it

it'll stay, but it changed things...

so yes, the scenic style of it is bothering me a little

i have a habit, when i work, of ignoring what is bothering me if i don't know what to do about it... at least until i can't ignore it anymore

and knowing just how much work is still to be done on the trees i wasn't willing to invest any more time in this unless i can be happy with it at the end

thinking hard on it made me also realize i had never intended the "palace" to become a focal point, or dominant feature and it seemed to be doing just that - much bigger and darker than i thought it would be

i pinned some scraps of sky fabric over top, covering a good third of it and immediately the whole thing settled, becoming less intrusive and more abstract, more in line with the hills

before doing anything drastic i folded it up and set it aside for a few days....today, looking at it for these photos, i came to liking it again

i can see now that i can "push" it even farther into the background now with the embroidery and embellishing

in my mind, i want to think it may or may not be there...some will see it and some might not

depending on their imagination

and maybe that's how i can bring it back to abstractedness

i'm not calling it "the frost queen" any longer either

too defined

too limiting

perhaps "a winter's day" or something like that

something that really doesn't mean anything

but i'll let the name come to me instead of trying to work toward it

game on...

a few weeks later, and the push is on now... 44 days....

i spent some time today refining the design

i appliqued sky fabric over part of the mud hut (for lack of a better term, it is now, and forevermore, until it looks like something else, the mud hut)

i think i like it, but as i scrolled down here i noticed that when i pinned on fabrics to see how it might look smaller, i left some of the brown on the left side - and i just appliqued sky right down to the ground....i am thinking it might look better if  i peel back some of the blue from the bottom? I would appreciate opinions....

 the tissue paper is in place so i can re-stitch the tree branches i covered when i did the applique

everything i have done on this quilt so far i have done at least twice. at least.

above you can see the preliminary outline of the branches that will come in on the left - no trunk, nor heavy branches, just some lightly done

the light was bad when i took the pics so will try again in the light of day tomorrow - by that time I should have the branches done and the picture should give a good idea of the general composition of the whole

i need to get these last few things sorted as quickly as i can - the days are wasting and the stream is waiting. i have a feeling it will be a bugger and take a lot of time and thought and i would hate to rush it

as far as the name goes, nothing stunning came to mind when i had to register it for the show

so for those purposes it will called

 the frost queen plays{on a winter's day}

i hate naming things

and i just realized i will have to make a label for this too

the only thing i dislike more than naming my work is putting a label on it

thank goodness both are only temporary!

Apr 25

below you can see the applique around the palace is complete and the secondary outlining of the branches is also done

after looking at this for a several days, both in real life and photographs, i decided i didn't like the extreme slant to the roof-line



sooo..... even though i very much wanted to be moving on from this stage, i took the time to do a little un-picking, resewing, re-branching

and now i can say positively, and for sure, the back-ground is as done as it can be

yesterday i spent half an hour finding all the different threads i plan to use to embellish the sky, and to fill in the trunks

i think it makes sense to fill the trunks in and then add whatever detail i need to in the branches, adding snow and sparkle and glitter

shimmer and shine!