Favorite tree

The Uncommon Threads art quilt group’s latest challenge is “My Favorite Tree.” At first I found that trying to limit myself to just one tree was very hard, but as I reviewed some of my old photographs I realized that I really do have a favorite. Or did. A Wahoo tree (Euonymus atropurpureus), native to this area. The tree starts in the Spring with green leaves first, then flowers with rather insignificant small brown flowers and in the fall it’s foliage is red and gold with little red pods opening to red berries. In the winter we used to see a flock of Cedar Wax Wing birds feast and strip it of the berries in just a few hours.

In 2009 we were hit with a terrible ice storm in which you could literally hear tree limbs cracking and breaking and falling. It was a terrible two days. When it was all over the beautiful little Wahoo tree in my back yard had “exploded” and all the branches were broken. All that was left was a trunk.

My first attempt was to print a photo image of the Wahoo foliage onto canvas and then fuse another photo image of the broken trunk onto that. I was not particularly thrilled with this so used it for the back.

Next I used a purchased hand dyed fabric on Etsy for the back ground and fused to it a free hand cut out of the trunk in brown fabric. The trunk, branch and berries are embellished with machine embroidery. then quilted with a free hand leaf motif.

 “Boo Hoo Wahoo” 

Lesson learned – don’t quilt through the canvas. The needle leaves holes.  You can see the other members work on our UT blog here. Enjoy.