Last year, Karen retired from the Forest Service. I had this idea brewing for awhile, so Karen's retirement seemed like a perfect time to create. I gathered up several discarded Forest Service uniform components and started putting things together. I didn't have much of a plan when I started, so the wall hanging took on a life of its own. It turned out to be twice the size I had in mind!
The while and beige backgrounds are cut from our casual uniform polo shirts. The dark green is from our casual uniform trousers and the lighter greens are from our field uniform shirts.
The sun is from a yellow Nomex shirt (heat resistant material for firefighting).
The stains on the sun are from drip torch fuel (combination of gas and diesel used for back burning or prescribed fires). The tree trunk is made from a gray T-shirt Jody donated from MOCC, our fire disptach center.
The oak leaves and the small pine trees were cut using Sizzix die cuts and my Big Shot. I quilted straight line rays out from the sun, and quilted in a circle within the sun. I finally took the plunge and tried free motion quilting (FMQ) for the leaves. As I gained more confidence, I did the more FMQ to enhance the hills and grass.
Another first for me was to create a quilt label. I used Sew-In Colorfast Fabric sheets for Ink Jet Printers (June Taylor product). It's an iron-on label I created on my computer. If you look closely, you'll see that I scorched the label by leaving my iron in one place too long. See the discoloring on the left and the perfect circles from my iron surface? Having a scorched label seemed extremely appropriate for this memory quilt!
