May I introduce......?

Finally I have work finished,--sort of.  This first piece is titled 'Generations". I took the pictures several years ago at McConnell Lake, and combined elements from three of them into this hanging.  I really wanted the focus to be the height and age of the trees,but soon realized that I needed the  figures to provide scale. I have never put figures in any of my previous pieces--and there have been quite a few of them.  Creating a working sketch of the figures was quite a chore,but I'm happy with the result.I had a simpler image of the three people simply walking away, but thought that it would be more interesting if there was some evidence of interaction between them. There are a couple of techniques in this piece that I've not used before, and I think I  learned quite a bit making it.

The title refers to the many generations it has taken to grow these trees, the five generations of my husband's family that enjoyed the family cottage at McConnell Lake before it was sold, out of the family, this summer, and finally the three generations of my own family, who were models for the picture.

 Here is a close-up of the figures.  Poor little girl has had her shoe fall off, and is asking her Mom for help.

The other piece is titled simply " Bonsai Tree". I spent a lot of time reading about bonsai trees on  the Internet.  I found out that they can be made from almost any type of tree.  They are defined by severely stunted growth, which leads to very dense foliage.  The containers they are grown in are often quite elaborately decorated.  And they can appear in almost any shape and configuration you could imagine.  This piece is done on hand-dyed fabric.  I don't know if it meets the definition of thread painting, but is entirely created with densely stitched thread, two shades of Superior Fantastico in shades of brown and beige, and two shades of green Sulky Blendable, two shades of sulky Blendable in grey,  along with two shades of 30wt Sulky solid.  The different densities of quilting made it necessary to block this piece, but here it is with the binding sewn on ready for hand finishing.

And here is the close-up.