Contemplating Autumn

This is looking up into the Deborah Maple in our back yard. Isn't it spectacular? This picture, taken today, belies yesterday altogether.

This weekend started out to be a typical West Coast kind of weekend. Saturday was the type of day that prompted my Dad, when I put sunglasses on for a snowy day walk in Edmonton, to say "Your eyes have grown dim from peering through the fog." Dad will be 94 this year. At the time, I laughed, but yesterday we were indeed peering through the fog and sunglasses were just something that needed wipers! It was rainy, windy, drizzly, dreary and totally designed for staying inside.....everything that everyone hears about for winter on Vancouver Island and accuses us of being waterlogged or in denial.

I spent the day with a friend in my studio, designing the cover page for a fabric tome, using the patterns designed by Patti Culea. www.pmcdesigns.com/tomes.htm
We had a totally pleasant time snipping and designing and sharing ideas. Joan's tome is going to have an African theme. Joan works with Kitambaa designs (note their blog in my favorites list) and goes to Africa once a year to teach women how to sew in order to support themselves. She has been deeply touched by all she has seen and done there.

My tome is going to be a theme of "Me, Myself & I". Sounds a little narcissistic but my intentions are not at all. I just like to design around the human figure so this gives me the chance to get lots of faces and bodies into the design. The entire project is designed to put various techniques to use. We started it FOUR years ago and never kept it up. We've decided we're going to try to meet every second Saturday and get this one completed.

Now this unbelievable picture, is the Half Moon Maple in our yard. It is also exactly what you see and definitely not touched up in any way. This tree is a favorite of ours, and has lived with us at three different houses now. It started out as a large bonsai, in a pot, but got to heavy and wasn't doing well, so we planted it. I think it likes it's new home! It is lime green in spring, bright green in the summer, has a wonderful round leaf and then gifts us with this in the fall.



And then there was today. Bright, sunny, warm, towels and sheets drying on the line outside and the colors......I could not resist the urge to go outside to take pictures of the colors in the middle of laundry and house keeping! These pictures are of the trees in my yard, and they are not touched up, adjusted or fixed in any way. So just imagine, if this is the color in my own little corner of the world, imagine what I see when I look up and out to the rest of the neighborhood and beyond to the mountains. It is truly spectacular and I'm certainly not peering.

But, if this isn't a quilt from nature waiting to happen, I don't know what would be!