Making a landscape quilt is a wonderful way to celebrate places and scenes that are special to you. The first step in making a landscape quilt is creating a design.
Use a Photo, Sketch, or Painting for Landscape Quilt Inspiration
While some quilters can conjure up a beautiful landscape from imagination alone, it’s much easier to adapt an existing image into a landscape quilt design. The image you start with can be a photograph, drawing, painting, or any image that catches your eye. (Be aware that many postcards, greeting cards, or posters are protected by copyright. It’s important to get permission before you use an image that belongs to someone else.)
The best images for beginners to work with are fairly simple scenes with strong lines. See Photos 1 and 2 at the bottom of the page for examples. (Click on any photo below to enlarge it.)
Use Horizontal, Vertical, and Diagonal Lines for Movement
Study any image of a natural scene and you will see lines that move the eye across the scene: the horizon line between earth and sky, a road going off into the distance, a stand of trees reaching up into the air, a building’s roofline, or a jagged city skyline, to name just a few. Different types of lines create different effects:
- Horizontal lines give a landscape quilt a sense of calm. Photo 2 at the bottom of the page shows the serenity of a landscape with predominantly horizontal lines.
- Vertical lines create a sense of strength and solidity. The vertical lines of tree trunks dominate the landscape in Photo 3 below.
- Diagonal and curved lines give a landscape quilt a feeling of movement. The road that cuts across the forest in Photo 1 below draws the eye into the distance. The swirling clouds and curving lines of the hills in Photo 4 below give vitality to what otherwise would be a dull and static scene.
Set a Mood and Create Depth with Fabric Color and Value
Choosing a color palette for the quilt sets the mood of the piece. The springy greens and browns of Photo 1 below give a very different feeling from the chilly blues and whites of winter scenes like Photos 2, 3, and 5. Learn more about the basics of color theory for quilters.
Use value, or a color’s lightness or darkness, to indicate distance in quilted landscapes. Darker fabrics make an object look closer, and paler fabrics make it look father away. Learn more about using light/dark contrasts in quilting.
Choose a Focal Point in the Quilt to Draw the Eye
The focal point is a quilt’s visual highlight, the spot that irresistibly draws the onlooker’s eye. Almost any element of the landscape can become a focal point – a mountain in the distance, a pine tree, a setting sun, a flowery meadow.
The placement of the focal point can help give the quilt a three-dimensional quality. Look how the moon draws the eye to the far distance in the landscape quilt in Photo 3 below, while the lighthouse in Photo 4 pulls the eye to the foreground.
To make an interesting quilt, try not to place the focal point right in the middle of the quilt. Locate it off-center to make the viewer’s eye travel across the quilt.
The easy way to highlight a focal point is by choosing a fabric color that contrasts with the rest of the quilt. The red of the lighthouse in Photo 4 is found nowhere else in the quilt. The silver-white moon in Photo 3 stands out against a background of dark blue sky and stark black tree trunks.
A landscape quilt can have more than one focal point. A beautiful setting sun on one side of the quilt can be offset by a pine tree in the opposite corner and a rock outcropping in the center. Just remember that it's important not to emphasize everything. Too many focal points can make a landscape look frenetic and unappealing.
Leave Room for Negative Space in Your Landscape Quilt
Negative space is an area of the quilt where nothing much happens. Negative space is not at all the same thing as wasted space -- it gives the eye somewhere to rest, and is an important element of a landscape quilt's design. The negative space in your quilt might be a peaceful sky or a calm lake. If you're not satisfied with your landscape design, adding more elements isn't always the answer. Sometimes subtracting elements can make for a more powerful design.
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Christine Mann - Christine Mann writes about quilting, home decor sewing, and creativity in daily life.
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