Sometimes hand-dye designs your quilt for you.
I had embroidered a radiated spoonbill landing, and I needed a background for her. This purply brown piece seemed nicely swampy and I loved the range of purple running in an arc through it. It looked like a bower of wisteria, so that’s what I went through.
I’ve done wisteria before. I sometimes feel I can smell them in the studio as I stitch on them
I wanted particularly soft glowing wisteria for this very dark swamp. These were done mostly from hand-painted lace, stitched with poly neon.
And small bright birds sitting in them.
On thing leads to another. The bird leads to the swamp background. The swamp leads to a wisteria bower. And the wisteria need bright little birds.
Wisteria, like roses, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, are part of the garden of my dreams. I can’t help but slip them in wherever their fragrance and illumination are needed.
The next step is to fit everything in together with a pond at the bottom, birds, and small fish.
On the other side of the studio, we have 2 torn-up 930 Berninas. Don has been heroically deciding which will live and which will be a parts machine. I’m working on the only functional embroidery machine, an 807 Bernina from around 1970. It’s a tiny machine, originally for classroom. We’re waiting for the resurrection, which sometimes spreads more slowly than you would like. It means I’m not able to work the 2 large quilts I have laid out at the moment. So….
An ocean floor, several external tenacles lots of jellyfish, I think. On a much smaller piece of fabric.
