Landscapes can provide wonderful inspiration for quilts. My family loves to camp and to travel and my husband takes some gorgeous photos of our trips. We've been to the Grand Canyon twice and some of the photos actually do justice to the breathtaking scenery. Below is a photo taken by my husband that I particularly love. 
In order to turn this beautiful landscape into an abstract for a quilt, I first need to make the photo black and white. This way I can see the contrast without the colors clouding my judgement. I used Microsoft Digital Image Pro to change the photo but there are other photo and image altering programs on the market that will also do the trick.
I created a cartoon of the landscape by placing a piece of paper over the black and white photo and, using a light box, tracing the major lines. This gave me an 8 inch by 11 inch pattern. I enlarged the pattern and printed it out at 11 inches by 17 inches. Then I picked out some fabrics from my stash of hand dyeds, looking for interesting colors and hues. I transferred the pattern to freezer paper and cut out the pieces, adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance all around. The photo show the pattern pieces pinned to my design wall.
I used a technique called 'air applique' to piece together the landscape. Normally, one might stitch each piece to a foundation piece of fabric. In air applique', you piece the pieces directly together, folding over one piece 1/4 inch and overlapping the other. Barbara Olson uses the technique and I learned it from her in one of her classes. The resulting landscape is below.
This is a fair abstract representation of the original photo. Tomorrow, I will use surface embellishment to focus on the striations of the Grand Canyon and bring it to life.
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