Wednesday 20 July 2016

Switzerland and Italy (Europe 5)

     This is going to be one very large wall-hanging. 7 buildings are completed. Originally I pulled out 26 photos for consideration, narrowed it down to 20, decreased it again to 15 .... and will probably need to drop the number again ... I don't have enough wall space to hang something this big when it is done!!


     This building in the Swiss Alps, we saw on our walk down from Schilthorn Mountain in the Lauterbrunnen Valley ... we took the gondola down 2/3 of the mountain then walked along a hiking trail, stopped for lunch and took another gondola down the last 1/3. Since the mountain is close to 3000 m, I am glad we didn't need to walk up or down it!!
     The quilt will need some small pieces for overlapping so this house is a stand-alone.  It still needs some trimming ... 4 hours to complete.

     On to the Cinque Terre in Italy ... the village of Manarola
     Auditioning fabrics; there are more white houses in this section of Manarola but I wanted to be able to show the separation of the buildings.  The turquoise on the right is actually green screens covering a renovation site. Not sure what I will do for the railings on the balconies ... either find some fabric with close stripes or sew individual posts.
     [Found a piece of fabric at Atlantic Fabrics that had overlapping sections of 'lined paper' that worked great for railings!]
     The photo was enlarged and I traced many of the houses onto Vellum or Tracing paper to use as templates. The coloured bits are cut from fabric with fusible web, ironed on to a background fabric. This time, because of the number of windows, I decided to outline them in black thread and colour them in with fabric markers. I had a little sample of one of the fabrics and tried all my marking choices to see which worked best in this case (Fineliner, pencil crayons, Inktense - dry and wet, Ultrafine Sharpie, Fabric Markers and Papermate Flair pens).  There are a lot more balconies in the photo, ... yeah, wasn't going there!! Artist's choice to quit or modify when necessary!
     Also decided to add a bit of colour on the railing sections to reflect the buildings behind them instead of the white of the fabric. Completion time: 8 1/2 hours.
     All the Cinque Terre villages were adorable and picturesque.  The people must have very strong legs as everything you do requires going up and down hills and stairs! I think this is the village we walked quite a ways up to get to the church.

PS ... the collection of hours. Non-quilters always ask, 'how long did it take to do that?' ... this time I will have a close approximation of the time although sometimes I begin to work and forget to note the start time. 

PPS ... in the end, the house in Lauterbrunnen Valley didn't make it to the quilt top ... it will have a special place on the back side with the title & date.

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