Sep 9, 20212 min read

Her Olive Green Landscape

Updated: Jun 20

She came to class and told me that this time she is going to sew a landscape piece all by herself, I am only allowed to explain how to do it and maybe show her, sewing on my piece and not on hers. She thinks she remembers how to do it, she has been thinking about it since last lesson.

She said that she liked that we chose fabrics from the scrap pile. she had told her grandmother about the lesson and was praised for her upcycling. She asked me to explain how I choose colors before she went to the scrap box..

We went outside and I told her to look around and tell me what she sees. I told her to imagine that she is in a story and writing it around her. Her description was "I see a brown field with pale green grass and lots of olive trees" We then went inside and I told her to write down all of the colors that she had seen. Not just the colors, but the shades between the colors as well.

Olive green, brown, pale brown, sand; grass and pale green.

Next we went to the scrap box and I told her to choose colors that were similar to what she had seen outside.

Her first choice was a greeny beige

An olive green stripe was next She said it made her think of the trees

And then a tan with a green stripe

The last piece she found was an olive green

These were the colors that she found in the box that she was happy with.

After joining and ironing all the strips together she had to choose a color for top stitching. These were her first 2 choices. She asked me which one she should choose. And I said that depends on whether she wanted the top stitch to blend in or slightly deepen the over all look of her work.

How does one decide that? One lays a piece of thread over the patchwork and sees whether it merges or stands out. So she did just that. The paler green merges.