Wistful Wisteria

I've become a lot more fond of the green family over recent years.  So when Gerrie chose chartreuse as our color for this challenge, the only difficulty I had was deciding which direction to pursue.  Especially at this point in early spring, I found myself surrounded by so many gorgeous shades of bright green!  But what came to mind early on was a photo I'd taken a year or two ago in my neighbor's backyard, of the baby leaves on their wisteria vine.

Before I spent some time photographing the wisteria covering their backyard arbor, I'd not appreciated how fuzzy wisteria leaves are, and how gracefully they curve as their viney stems shoot out new growth.  And of course, I loved the photographic effect of the purple bokeh (the fancy photography name for the blurry background) of the wisteria blossoms.

Using thread painting techniques demonstrated by my friend Susan Brubaker Knapp in Quilting Arts magazine and her thread painting DVD, I set out to "paint" this picture.  I started with large pieces of green fabric fused to the purple background fabric.  And, as I added color and texture with thread, I worked on translating the picture pretty literally to capture that fuzzy white glow around the leaves.  I had a great time using almost every shade of green thread I had in my collection, as well as some blues, browns, reds, yellows, and white.

Here's a detail shot:

I finished this with a simple facing.  I really enjoyed my thread painting experiment, and learned a lot about how much stabilizing is necessary for all this stitching!  (And I owe a big thanks to Susan for her email tips and encouragement!)