Desert Flower

I thought I would start this blog with one of my past quilts. The name of this one is "Desert Flower." About 4 years ago I took my Mom and Dad to Arizona for a week's vacation. My Mom had always wanted to to see the Grand Canyon. When I was a kid and my Dad would take us on vacation saying we were going to the Grand Canon there would always be a "but first", such as, "but first we will go to Utah to visit relatives. So we never made it. While I was in collage I went with some friends through the south west thus the Grand Canyon was part of that trip.

At any rate when I took my parents to Arizona it was in May. The desert floor was richly colored and modeled. There were these spiny plants everywhere. They just sort of twined along the ground. It rained some while we were there. After the rains those spine plants with ity bity leaves would burst in bloom which would last only about 24 hours. So as you drove along you would see these beautiful, tissue thin, white spots flutter with your passing breeze.

When I got home and looked at the pictures I had taken these flowers are what my quilting thoughts kept coming back to. The leaves were different greens overlaying each other. The leaves were defined by my stitching. The flowers look trapunto but that is just because all the rest is stippled. I tried some very subtle 3D stuff with the flowers.

I don't quite know what brought this quilt to mind except maybe I was looking at some of my pics of flowers from our resent trip.