Boab Trees

Quilt #14

Boab Trees

This quilt was made during a workshop that I attended with Gloria Loughman sponsored by the Country Concessions Quilt Shop in Cookstown, ON,  a couple of years ago.

Gloria is from Australia, where the boab tree grows. She is a wonderful teacher and should you ever have the opportunity, take one of her classes.  She has written 2 books: Luminous Landscapes and Quilted Symphony. 

In this workshop, we learned to paint backgrounds for quilts using textile paint. The paint is applied and let dry. It then needs to be heat set to be permanent, this can be done using an iron and parchment paper.

painted sky

I painted the sky on white cotton and the ground piece just below the mountains was painted on a beige batik.

A full size pattern was made on stabilizer and freezer paper. After deciding on the construction order for the background area, the freezer paper was cut into each shape and applied to the right side of the fabric. Each piece was positioned on the stabilizer raw edge machine appliqued.

Fusible web was added to the tree fabric, the shapes cut and fused to the background.

quilting and skinny borders

Another technique taught by Gloria was how to make very skinny borders.  I added a black and a yellow and then the last wider border which I decided to flip to the back and stitched down as binding.  This quilt was free motion quilted.

back and label

Boab Trees measures 18½” x 17½” and was made in 2009.


Have a great day,


Terry