Skagit Valley Stormy Spring - Inspired-along challenge 2022 Entry

This was a totally for fun, no rules, fooling around, whatever-happens-happens, 100% made from stash, project!

Just north of where I live is the Skagit Valley. Along with being a hugely important area in West Coast bird migration, it’s also home to many, many bulb farms. It’s famous for the tulip festival every spring, but I actually appreciate the earlier daffodils even more. Just beyond the daffodils, when you stand with your back to Puget Sound, are the foothills of Cascade Mountain range. It is a photographer’s paradise - mountains, incredible skies, birds of all kinds - including flocks of thousands & thousands of huge Trumpeter & Tundra Swans.

So I started thinking about doing a mixed media version of one of my photos, and photos from local photographers I liked. I stitched everything together, no glue etc.

Everything is from stash! The background/stormy sky is dark blue tulle. The mountains/foothills are denim bits i was using to make a quilt. The daffodil rows and green leaves are felt, leftover from swap projects. The birds are from scrap paper from a used up sketch pad. The Moon you see in some photos is my needle-minder, and is not part of the project! Lol

Some in-progress photos:

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Some of my photos & from local photogs that inspired me.

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Wow. This is… incredible. Wow.

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What an amazing project, and an amazing landscape. Thanks for sharing the inspiration photos as well as in-progress shots.

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This is wonderful!

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Lovely! All the different textures work wonderfully together. It’s a very cheery scene. :grinning: :+1:

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It really is so cheerful after our very long gray dark wet winter, to come over a hill and see these acres and acres of bright shining yellow flowers! It always lifts my spirits, and for me it is that true sign of the world renewing itself and Spring arriving - even if we have another two months of gray and wet to go! LOL

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That murmmer is just breathtaking! I can’t beleive you caught them all lifting off! Your piece is so freaking cool!

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This is utterly fantastic! It’s oddly mesmerizing, too. I love how the paper migration is sewn on, each little piece.

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(In the photos, the birds that have black wingtips are Snow Geese, but I decided to do just swans)

This is neat, especially after seeing the inspiration pics. What a beautiful representation of a lovely spring day!

Stunning! I love the scrappy, stash-y nature of this piece. Your inspiration is gorgeous!

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Beautiful. I love that you used paper for the birds. It gives them a distinctly different feel and adds to their airiness.

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Congrats! This cool hoop is one of this week’s featured projects! You rock!

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Wow!! Thanks so much!

Gorgeous, and I love that it’s mixed media. It’s cool to find just the right material to represent something.

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This is beautiful and I love the mixed media-ness of it.

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Really captured the explosion of birds well!

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You did a wonderful job of representing your scenery…just love how you layered things and the mix of materials…I hope to see a lot more mixed media stitching like this…very inspiring!

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