The end of the Christmas Tree and a big presumption!

The sprouts on the tree are wilting now, as it hasn't been watered in a while. The decorations are put away and the tree is out in the snow bank for the birds to enjoy.
While organizing the sewing room I came across these, so I attached one to the back of Isaacs wallhanging. Don't tell his other Aunties!

The tree has slowed down sucking up water and needles are starting to fall, but the sprouts are still growing out.
The sprouts are bigger on the sunny window side of the tree.

From Picture to Quilt - Part 1

I really like the picture of the Christmas Tree Sprouts so I decided to start the process of turning it into a quilted wallhanging.
I start out trying to identify the particular shading of the pine branch, and this particular picture I am using two different lightness/darkness to identify shape and shadow. The darker one I can see the definition of the sprouts, and on the lighter version I can better see the pine needle definition. You can click on the pictures to see a large version of the photo.

Apparently some women (young latina gang-bangers) use Sharpies to draw on their eyebrows...this I saw on the George Lopez show. I don't use my Sharpies for that. Using a fine sharpie I outline the pine sprouts shapes and shading on one drawing and the pine needles on the other drawing.

I cut out the pine sprouts.

From Picture to Quilt - Part 2

I used a glue stick to apply the pine sprouts to the lighter drawing of the needles.

I don't know why this photo turned sideways, blogspot did that all on it's own. I photocopied the picture with the glue-sticked-pine-sprouts so I don't have to worry about making mistakes.

On my photocopy I start to outline the shading of the pine needles.

I use a numbering system to determine shading. Absolute white is 1 and black is 10. I start to try to identify what I think the shading should be. This will probably be altered after I start pulling it all together. In this photo my choice for 1 looks sorta grey, but it's really white.

I went to Kinkos and had the drawing enlarged 300%. and printed with 36" wide paper. That black bar you see on the top is from the machine thinking the drawing was dark and then correcting itself. It's fine that it did this, I only need the outline. Enlarging the drawing 300% means my lines are 300% thicker too. The next step I will take is tracing this larger drawing so I have normal width lines, and smoothing the lines out. I'll post about it again in a few days.

Ach Tannenbaum, Ach Tannenbaum, du bist ein edler Zweig!

The Christmas tune "Oh Christmas Tree" originates from Germany, all the way back to 1550.
I'm not saying my nascent postmodernism attempt at using ugly-fabric strips to create trees is any comparison, but heck, Minneapolis woke up to snow this morning. Not a big dump of snow by any means, more like a fart; but atleast it was pretty for a short time.
One of my memories of driving through the mountains of Idaho is when the sun and the mountains were at the right angle and I was looking into the sun, the mountain would be in the shade except all of it's pine tree tips and limbs would be highlighted by the sun as if beautifully luminescent against the dark. I've always wondered how I could interpret that in a quilt. This is my first attempt at figuring out some type of structure for the trees....obviously I haven't worked on the tips and limbs being illuminated by the sun and this form might not be conducive to that. But it's a start.