Orange - Heat Wave - Part One

My local art quilt group put out a call for entries for an exhibit called "Heat Wave".  I immediately thought of the bright orange of the forest fires that we have been experiencing all over the Western United States over the last couple of years.

I sketched up a few ideas, looked through my pictures, and scoured the internet for additional color inspiration.  What I landed on was a plan to make a piece 3' x 4' with flames licking up from the bottom part of the quilt and pieces of burning embers floating up and through the trees.

I collected a few fabrics that spoke to me.  This time I really wanted to free form piece the background and layer on the units in a more intuitive way.  I free form cut curvy lines and started piecing.  Here are some progress pictures.

Background fabric try outs

 After putting the strip pieced units against the remaining fabrics, I opted to piece in some of the dark brown and continued to piece intuitively and free form cut the strips.

Upper background piecing progress 1

 Here is the upper background fully pieced.  You can see that it mostly covers the top 2/3 of the area.  The lower 1/3 was purposely reserved for a different technique and a different foreground look.  I asked my husband to come in and tell me the first thing that came to mind when he looked at this background, and he said, " FIRE".  Yippee!  It has the feeling that I was going for.

Upper background piecing progress 2

I hope it feels like FIRE to you too.  Stay tuned for future progress.