Monet's Garden, Giverny, France

Quilt is 48” X 60”

The artist’s comments on this quilt

It would be hard not to make a beautiful quilt when you've got a picture like this from which to work. This photo was taken at Giverny, the place in France where Monet lived and painted. His beautiful gardens continue to be maintained and thrill thousands of visitors each year. The couple that commissioned this quilt visited Giverny as part of a 30th wedding anniversary trip through France, so the quilt will always remind them of their wonderful journey. The photo of the quilt really can't convey the look of the actual wall hanging because its four foot by five foot size is so important to the quilt's impact, but even in this small picture I think it's pretty.

I chose a mostly green fabric for the water as that's what is in the photo, but there is a reflection of blue in the water at the bottom of the picture so I looked for fabric that had touches of blue. I added a greater variety of greens because a quilt of all the same color would not have worked as well even though it looks great in the photograph -- it would have been difficult to differentiate the foreground from the background and get the depth that was needed in this quilted view with all the same colored fabric. In fact, I don't think there's a green fabric in my stash that didn't find its way into this quilt! I moved the row boat because the bridge is such an important feature of this quilt and I didn't want the boat to obscure it's full beauty. I added flowers to the lily pads because I liked the additional color. I pulled some less obvious features from the picture and made them more prominent again for the color -- the red shrub on the right as well as the park bench and pergola on the pathway to the left of the bridge. I chose a more colorful sky because the fabric looks like it was painted so it fit with the quilt. I didn't count them, but there are hundreds of pieces cut out and sewn onto this quilt - individual leaves, lily pads, plants along the water's edge... this was my most ambitious project ever! I quilted with clear thread (except in the border) because I wanted texture from the quilting, I didn't need the quilting to add more visually to the picture I'd created from fabric. For this reason, the quilting doesn't show up well on the photo but there is tons of quilting -- about 30 hours just for the machine quilting on this project. It was a labor of love, so I'm glad to report that the owners of "Monet's Garden" do indeed love it too.

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