"Foraging by Moonlight"

My Fyber Cafe challenge 2013, "A River Runs Through It" is finished. It was a labor of love, 3 months or more of details, and design decisions.

The sky and Moon are my hand dyed fabrics, the grove of birch trees are a pre-printed fabric, fussy cut into tree trunks. The moon and 3 largest trees are trapunto with an extra layer of batting, added after the thread painting. The background layers are Bali batiks in dark teal. Ferns, leaves, foliage and rocks were fussy cut, and placed to add depth, and a base to the trees and an edge to the river. The river was an assortment of turquoise, selected by the planner, as a color guide, layers of hand dyed cheese cloth, and white cheese cloth were layered, to make white water accents to the river. The river was stitched with turquoise rayon threads, and over stitched with a clear holographic thread to add shimmer. The salmon were fussy cut prints. I did not want to use fussy cut deer, I wanted them to look more painterly, so I added acrylic paints over the print, to get more of a handmade look. The foreground was cut from a print of rocks, flowers and logs, with a few small snails and butterfly. It was quiet dark so I added more foliage, and added silk ribbon embroidery to add texture and color. I added an extra section of the foreground as a 3-D layer, off the bottom edge of the wall hanging, to give an extra layer of depth. At the top I used pipe cleaners, inserted into the 2 largest birch trees to extend them over the top edge. They were anchored for extra strength by pieces of painted, melted Tyvek, cut into ragged leaf clusters. The edge is a turned under facing, and the same fabric as the batik backing fabric, and sleeve. The bobbin thread is matching color to the machine stitched rayon quilting. All of the 14 sections will be displayed together, with the river running through all the pieces. See the Fyber Cafe blog, the link is on the side panel. You can see some of them on display at the Elkton Butterfly Gardens, June 29th in Elkton, Oregon, at an event to benefit, the Elkton Charter School Music Program. The Pyrenees Winery will display all the pieces in August, at the winery in Myrtle Creek, Oregon.