Tree of Life - the finale

It's been a long time since my last blog post so . . . . as I said at that time, this tree of life landscape was commissioned to be used as a book cover so there were some design factors that had to be considered for it to be functional as well as an inspiring piece of art.  After a consultation, we decided to eliminate the roots of the tree and bring in more of the spring garden aspect of the landscape.

I re-worked the lower section of the landscape with a cheery hand dyed green fabric and then added flowers in the garden with hand embroidery.  It is a representation of the memorial garden at Sorrento Centre.

The book cover was then cut down the spine and I inserted another piece of hand dyed fabric that I printed with the name of the centre.  There is a pocket in the front flap to hold pamphlets or papers and it has been tightly fit to the scrapbook sized binder.

Work in Progress - Tree of Life Landscape

It's been ages since I have last posted new work ... but it's certainly not because I have been idle.  The winter has been full of fibre art experiments, workshops and dabblings . . . and now that spring is underway, I feel that I would like to post some photos of a piece that I am working on right now.

This is a small art quilt that will not see life as a wall hanging, but as a book cover ... I will post more on that, and final photos, once it has been presented to the organization that commissioned it.  In order to make this as durable as possible, I had to reject some of the techniques and fibres that I might have liked to use in this piece.  Because it will be handled (although not heavily) I felt that I should use woven fabric and stitching to achieve the look I wanted.  The fabric is all hand-dyed or hand-painted ... some of it by me, some by others.

The background design is a slightly abstract landscape of our beautiful Shuswap Lake and the tree has been created as a tree-of-life, with the roots going down into the ground and the branches and leaves reaching to heaven.  The tree has some limbs that have been cut off at some time, but the other branches are still carrying on and bringing life to the myriad leaves, represented by hand stitching in a variety of green threads.

There is still more work to be done on it, but I am pleased with how it is developing.

Clergy Stole

This is a custom stole that I made recently for someone who will be ordained to the priesthood soon . . . It was created with the theme of the Shuswap (the lake, mountains, trees) but also with predominately green colours as it will be used during "green" liturgical seasons.

After much hunting for the "right" green background fabric, I was delighted to locate the one I used which has an underlying brown thread in the green ... it works really well with the landscape theme that I was using. The landscape itself has been created from pieces of cotton fabric ... both hand painted and commercial ... and, although the two sides of the front of the stole are similar, they are not identical.


At the back of the neck there is an appliqued cross with an arch on each side, reminiscent of St. Francis' Chapel, the outdoor chapel at Sorrento Centre.