Learning to make fire – 2016.05.05

I’ve been auditioning fabrics for my newest Tree quilt.  The theme is a forest fire.  I’ve long wanted to make a quilt featuring fire, and I’m working on a Tree series, so it made sense to put the two together.

Wildfire fabricsMy intent is an abstract interpretation of a forest fire, but with the impression of fire and flames – hot and glowing.  My fabric choices will be important to achieve the effect I want.  These are some of the fabrics I started with.  I’ve been looking at images of fire and I’m drawn to the ones with some dark pink in the flames, along with orange and yellow.  I picked the gray-green for the smoky sky behind the fire.

As you will see below, almost immediately, I changed my mind about most of my initial fabric picks.

 

FP pressed to back of tree fabricOne main tree, and possibly some background tree trunks will be in black fabrics.  I cut the main tree shape from freezer paper and pressed it to the back of a black print fabric.  I trimmed the fabric close to the edge of the freezer paper.  I left a little extra around the edges because I’m not sure if I’m going to fuse, glue it, or just stitch it to the background.

 

 

I pinned the tree to the design wall, then auditioned various background fabrics by slipping them behind the tree.  I remembered that I had set aside some fabrics a few months ago just for this project, so tried a few of them.   I cut brighter fabrics into flame shapes and positioned them around the trees.

auditioning fabric 1  auditioning fabric 2  auditioning fabric 2a  auditioning fabric 3 

 

The background fabrics all seemed too dark and too red.  A little research on the internet shows that fire is actually more yellow than red.

Wikipedia says: ‘The dominant color in a flame changes with temperature. . . . . Near the ground, where most burning is occurring, the fire is white, the hottest color possible for organic material in general, or yellow. Above the yellow region, the color changes to orange, which is cooler, then red, which is cooler still. Above the red region, combustion no longer occurs, and the uncombusted carbon particles are visible as black smoke.’

Then I remembered all my fabrics with metallic accents.  (When I was making this quilt a couple of years ago, I pulled all the metallic fabrics out of my stash and put them in a separate drawer.   I haven’t touched them since.)  But it occurred to me they would be great for fire.  This seems closer to the impression I want.

auditioning fabric 4

 

And this is what my cutting table looked like during this process.  But I’m having fun!

pile of fabrics 2  pile of fabrics

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative projects to inspire you.

   Esther’s Blog   Sew Fresh Quilts

 

 

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3 Responses to Learning to make fire – 2016.05.05

  1. Kate says:

    I will now look at my fireplace differently.

  2. I like the third picture – it’s working.

  3. Michelle Archilla says:

    Beautiful

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