The Book Thief--

Label

Our Thread Tales book club read "The Book Thief" by Markus Kusak. I was inspired by the author's use of color in the opening segment of the book. 

I was inspired by the number of people who banded together to help one of the characters survive the war and the "rules" they lived through. 

Example of quilting

I was inspired by a passage in the book where a farmer has apple trees and some city kids climb over the fence and strip the trees of their fruit before he can. They strip the trees because they are starving.

I had participated in a half square triangle batik (HST) exchange through the
online community of "The Quilt Show" that Edyta Sitar had inspired. I also participated in a HST batik triangle exchange with one of my small groups. These HSTs became the basis for my project.

Finished quilt

To ensure the HSTs were the correct size, we paper pieced them. I used "Thangles" as the foundation paper for my HSTs. I didn't have enough so I used some of my scraps to make the remaining HSTs to finish the tree block.

Inspired by the apple trees and inspired by the sense of community, I chose Sitar's tree pattern as the basis of my project. I've some interesting colors of trees. . .like blue and purple; but, in my world it works. The trunks are a batik fabric I had purchased years ago. I happened upon the green setting square triangle fabric while shopping for another project. I used the tree design in the print to free motion quilt the piece. I stitched continuous curves in the tree leaves.

I had the leaf border fabric in my stash too. It was great to use it in this project. I quilted around the leaf prints. Although, the judges' comments, the two times that I exhibited it in shows, were that the border fabric didn't play well with the top.

I still like the border and all the ways that I incorporated the feeling of many more trees into the piece. I completed this project in 2011. I used wool batting. Because this is a scrappy project, I'm linking to Cynthia and Oh Scrap/Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework.