The Forest of Trees: Susan Pickerell's Round Robin

This is Susan Pickrell and her tree which she is sending on for her round robin. It's a great tree and Susan believes in practice....lots of practice.

She tried several different things before finally settling on this one....and I have to admit, some of the pictures aren't terribly flattering of Susan as she was flipping through them all so quickly, it was hard to get....and I didn't notice Gwen's straw sticking up into the photos.







This one is her "Jungle tree" . She slipped in a lion and a monkey from some novelty prints into it....and there's a Cheetah Girl from the print she chose as a background.














She used some t-shirt transfers cut out and arranged so that the words made the "leaves" of the tree in this one....which will be really cool with more embellishment. Like me, Susan haunts the clearance section of various craft stores and comes up with some really interesting ways of using them.

This next one is her strip tree....notice how she's been consistent with her light source and made sure that the shadow only fell on one side of the tree...something I really have to be mindful of. It's easy to accidentally place light coming from several different angles....



This next one she used some cheese cloth....and then painted it. She felt that the paint wasn't too successful. The writing in the fabric is from a "Cheetah Girl" fabric which was in clearance...I liked the fabric, and I liked the sentiment...but I wasn't thrilled with the signature of "The Cheetah Girls." Somehow when Susan's using it, you don't even notice.











This next one is one which Susan calls her "fiber tree." Susan needle felted a variety of specialty yarns into the background. She bought a Singer Embellisher and has been very happy with it.





























This ones kind of fun because she used some fabrics from her stash. I can't wait to see what she ends up doing with it.especially since the blue of the tree is so similar to the lightning print she used for the sky.


This next one is what she calls her "Asian Pine." She was doing some machine embroidery and designed this one.








This last one is another one which I think is kind of fun. The fencing is made from an embroidered ribbon.

Susan is relatively new to art quilting...I think this exploration the Batty Binders has been doing has really pushed her to try some of the things she had in her head already. She does a lot of the practice pieces from Quilting Arts and is very faithful in working at this. She's also got a great imagination. I can't wait to see what she's going to do next!