#38 Prairie Point Landscape

#38: Prairie Point Landscape
Finished: 9/23/12
Techniques: Prairie Points, Machine stitches, Free-motion quilting
Size: 30" x 15"

Description: I've made prairie points before, but just as examples. I've never incorporated them into a quilt before, so it was about time I did. I had some purple fabric with white whisps that did well for sky (it really is purple but looks blue in the photo), and I used a green leaf fabric for the grass and tan for mountains. Cutting these into strips allowed me to add many prairie points creating a stylized landscape design. I used various browns for mountains, white for snow caps, florals for fields of flowers, and rock fabric for rocks.

Before sewing, I placed the prairie points on a design board on loan from Pam Jones (thanks, Pam!). I felt it needed something more, so I added a pine tree. Once I did that, the mini-quilt was too wide for the design board, so I took advice from another quilting friend, Jan Keder, and stapled a piece of batting to the wall. It works really well too!

And still, when I looked at the landscape, there was a lot of blue sky. So I added some clouds. Because I made the prairie points at different times, I didn't realize how many I actually made until I counted them all up. There are 66 in total. I was surprised - it really didn't seem like I had made that many. They are very easy to make.

I found two methods online for making prairie points. The first was to take a square of fabric and fold diagonally, then fold again perpendicular to the hypotenuse. This creates a prairie point with a pocket on the side in which you can nest another prairie point. I used this method for the majority of prairie points. For the pine tree, I used the other method for creating a prairie point. I folded a square lengthwise, then folded down the upper corners to the bottom center.

Originally, I had intended to simply appliqué a piece of brown fabric for the tree trunk. But it didn't seem right, somehow. I wondered how to construct a tree trunk from prairie points. When a prairie point is made, there is a raw edge that is usually sewn into a seam. I could have left a raw edge and sewn over it as I did with the snow caps, but I decided to turn under the raw edge and butt prairie points next to each other and zigzag over them. It made a nice effect.

Quilting was done with machine stitches and some free-motion stitching for the sky. I bar-tacked a couple of the larger prairie points so they would stay vertical, but most were left free standing. This is one mini-quilt that looks better in person than in the picture. It was fun to do!