Bird of the Night - Design

I thought I'd show the process I used to come up with the design for this art quilt. My first step was gathering photos of bird of paradise flowers that I had taken over the years:




I liked the appearance of this one in particular, and made a sketch based on this flowers appearance:



I was making this art quilt for an exhibit that requires a 40" x 40" finished size. To accommodate this size I needed a design element above or below the flower to make a square. I chose the leaf shapes below the flower head because they suggest the flower is rising above the plants greenery.

Once I was satisfied with my sketch I took it to my local copy service and enlarged it to a 40" x 40" size:




A while ago I had done a doodle of a bird of paradise and put a wide variety of shapes in different areas of the flower.


 That doodle gave me the idea to do this piece with thread stitching. The lines inside the flower head and petals will be my guide for different machine quilting stitches. I have some very bright threads that I wanted to use, so I chose a black fabric for the background. I'll show more of this in upcoming posts.

Thanks for visiting my blog!