Hawaiian Flamingos an impressionist quilt

It may be small but it represents a lot. ( 10" X 12.5")
My friend Sonja in Hawaii, is an artist who also teaches painting on fabric, and got the great idea to send me some scraps. Tiny pieces, odd pieces, strings that tied the sweet soap she included

all that in a little bento box with two ti leaves!
I pressed all of it, even the little strings holding the soap, and arranged it to make myself see a landscape.
I have found if I think about a certain thing in nature while making an abstract work, it comes out looking like it, in this case, tropics.

It took some play to best use all the fabric, sew this to that, then the next one to the union, then those three to another... then I saw a little dot of random color on the peach fabric, and cut a flamingo... then another... and...
then it was time to over-quilt it.

I used cotton threads this time, variegated on the sand, added in a little piece of blue left over for a small eddy in the sand, zig zagged some legs on.

see the palm tree quilted in? The pink blob looked like a feather so that's how I quilted it. I put the tiny bit of green scrap left over for a leaf as that area seemed to want some green. Look how tiny the red strip is when pieced in... finishing about 1/4"

I just put the applique's down and stitch over. I do not like fusible, I do like texture in an art piece. I would turn edges in a bed quilt or one to enter in competitions. I love the rough immediacy of these.
Look how the little eye shows up from the splatter. I also like the tan thread I was going to just baste them on with until I saw how painterly they looked with it.

note the french knots in the sand

I like repetition in quilting lines

thank you Sonja for providing a wonderful prompt for me, I needed to lose myself in a project, and to stretch my imagination, to use my thread and machine, to remember how to play.

I painted with fabric that Sonja painted.
Spirals, waves, pebbles, feathers... layers... can't you just smell the ocean?

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