Branching Out

Late last week I was talking to myself (I think we all do this a little bit, right?), reminding myself that I had lots of projects on the go, a few self-imposed deadlines that I'd like to meet, and no time to be practicing the art of distraction, in particular trying a new technique that I'd seen Paulette playing with on her blog - improv trees and birds, for which she kindly provided links to tutorials. That resolve lasted about 48 hours.

I went to see Jane at the cottage for the weekend with plans to get some hand stitching done. I did some work on Danuta's Garden, but yesterday we decided that we needed to give improv trees a try. What fun!

Jane is already in Fall mode so she worked with two large leafy prints similar to what she had seen in the tutorials.

I didn't have a photo of Paulette's work but I remembered it feeling very wintery, so that's the direction I went in.

Our mystery guest also tapered her branches more than mine so she ended up with lots of great perspective in her two trees. I will say though that using tapered branches creates a bit more challenging assembly as it really skews your block as it grows. Jane put a border on this one and is planning lots of ghostly embellishments to create a Halloween wall hanging or runner.

This one in particular looks to me like you are standing at the base of the tree and looking up into all those leaves.

Here's our tree collection - not bad for an hour or two of fun.

When I got home I played some more and made the five blocks on the right. They are wildly addictive and it will be fun to see where they take me.

I thought that they would go well with the two I made yesterday (on the left) but the turquoise background is too intense for the new blocks, so I will make them into something else, maybe pillows for the Holly Bazaar. Anyway, so much for giving myself a good talking to....M