Hope Springs Eternal - my hope of hiking the AT

Project Quilting season 10 has begun.  The first challenge of the season is themed "Hope Springs Eternal".  My home is in Tonawanda New York, just between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. One of my greatest hope is when I retire in 4 years is I can hike the Appalachian trail one day.  May not be the whole trail at once, but at least sections of it at a time.

I did have a few different ideas for this theme but my first was the hike.  I've always looked online for different quilting techniques and love the way art quilts and collage quilts are put together.  I've never put together a quilt under netting but I really think this is going to be my way to go.  It was soooooooo easy to lay out and quilt over top of the netting.  I had the whole quilt ready to quilt in 2 hours from ironing the fabric scraps to pinning on the netting.  I think if I would have had to wonder under the fabrics and iron them onto the base I would never have finished it.  If anybody is thinking about using netting - JUST DO IT.  You will be glad you did.

 Maybe one challenge this season I will tackle a collage quilt - but for now I wanted to do a landscape.  I also have a new years resolution to not buy any new fabrics thru February and to use up some scraps.  This project was mostly scraps besides a few larger pieces and the backing.

I started with my base fabric, a multi shaded blue fabric that I've used on many projects.  Then I added some light blue triangles for mountains.  I then layered some darker mountains on them, and some even darker blue triangles for the foreground mountains.

As I started adding some scrap green fabric for pine trees on the base of the mountains, it looked like they were trees coming out of a flooded area, so I added a piece of green fabric for the ground.  Looked more natural that way.  I continued to add scrap green triangles for the trees in three different shades of green.  Luckily I have lots of scraps to choose from.

Lastly I printed up a silhouette of a women backpacker and cut out two, faced them towards each other in the clearing as to mark the beginning of the trail for the two of them.  I did not have any wonder under to attach all the pieces to my base, so I had a piece of netting from my stash that I ironed flat (since it was all wrinkled) and pinned it atop my pieces.

Next part of my quilt is the quilting so I started with the mountains.  I just stitched along the edge of the mountains and then stitched about half an inch away from the edge a couple more times to keep shape.  I used a similar color for each mountain range.  Next I put some swirls in the sky, a new stitch that I have never done before - I got better by the end.  

Then I went onto the trees where I stitched a center tree trunk then zigzagged across the tree to the bottom (or top depending on which way I was going).  They turned out so cute.  You can see the tulle netting fabric in the tree picture since I did a closeup picture.

Then I just stitched black thread around and around the shape of the backpackers.  I left the ground unquilted because I really didn't want to screw up how good it looked.  I put a brown "tree bark" fabric binding around it.  The size is 22"x24" and it will be hung in my sewing room.  I am trying to beautify it a little bit since the walls are bare and dark looking paneling.  Hope you like it. 

 Until I quilt again.