Simple ways to start art quilting

Seagull Sunset

​Have you ever wanted to try art quilting but don’t know where to start? I have a few easy ways to help get you over the hurdle of getting going! I have lots of tricks for making projects that look great but are really pretty simple when you break them down. These are all landscape style quilts.
Let’s start with the background. There are several ways to give yourself a head start. Use a watercolorish fabric, which looks like a landscape all by itself. (Seagull Sunset quilt) Or, use a panel that doesn’t have too much going on in the foreground, they are out there! (see two chickadee quilts) If you are a bit braver, you can make a simple striped background. (two single crane quilts) I like to have a bit of gradation in mine, but that’s not always necessary. If you are even braver, do a curvy stripe background. Just three carefully chosen fabrics cut with curved edges begins  to look like a world! Basically, the top one needs to look skyish! (quilt with three crane silhouettes) From there, it’s not too hard to add mountains….then trees… It’s kind of addicting once you get started :-)

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based on a photo by Mark Sparky Stensaas

​Once you have a background, there are some simple ways to add a foreground. The simplest of all is to do a silhouette. Several of these quilts were done that way. (more below) The Seagull Sunset quilt is done with only two fabrics other than borders! I also added a bit of thread sketching for some details, but only two fabrics. For the background, I cut it in half and flipped one half vertically so the sky and water are mirror images. So not only two fabrics, but only two pieces of each one! A step up from silhouette appliques is more detailed appliques. Those can be as detailed as you’d like. As you get more confident, you can add thread painting or other embellishments.
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Another little trick is to use lots of borders. The teal tree quilt has only a small area that has the actual scene on it, the rest of the stripes are basically borders. The crane potholder is another example of that, and the iris and the swan. And I often do not make my borders the same all the way around, that is another way to make quilts artsy. I add details to borders with bead, buttons, quilting, decorative stitching or other art quilty techniques.
Once you break quilts into parts, you can see that you can do a lot of fun projects without doing anything super complicated. I hope you will give them a try, and send me a picture! Either like my On the Trail Creations Facebook page and send a message, or join my On the Trail Creations VIP facebook group.
And of course, our kits and patterns are another way to give you a head start on your art quilting journey!