Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 3

Santorini, one of my favorite places to visit in Greece, is almost done.

The buildings are quilted in different patterns, giving the scene lots of interesting texture, and the street is paved in pebbles.

Though it's difficult to see, the pebbles get smaller as they flow toward the wall in the back, which is an important element to aid in the perspective of the piece. 

Another element is emphasizing details. In the picture below, the dark shadow is stitched over with black thread,

and the grey shadow is stippled, which will match the stippling of the wall.

And inside the window, the quilting not only makes the area darker, but it also mashes down the batting. The cream trim around the window is left unquilted so that it can stand out and away from the window. It's those little details that add to the realism, and are really a result of common sense.

Keeping that in mind, the middle building is left unquilted, 

because I didn't want it to blend in with its window or side, both of which are in the 'background'.

Then finally, there's the sky. Cathy has four different ways to quilt skies, and I opted for the more simple long, wavy horizontal lines. The sky is crystal clear, with no hint of clouds.

This time I used a walking foot and some pins to use as guidelines. An embroidery technique of using jump stitches avoids stitching numerous times around the steeple.

Clean and easy to trim away!

Cathy has many more quilting suggestions in the Lovely Landscape Quilts book, such as water, hills, mountains, and foregrounds. I highly recommend this book if a landscape or pictorial quilt is in your future.

Happy Quilting!