I have always loved fall best of all the seasons. I love the colors of the leaves, the gold and reds, the browns and oranges. When I was a girl, every fall my family took a day trip to the Allegheny Mountains to see friends on a farm. I loved how the colored trees looked on the hillsides, huge rounded masses of color next to color.
My mom was an oil painter, and her earliest paintings were copies of Robert Wood landscapes, trees in autumn. This still life painting hangs in my aunt's house, and was Mom painted it in the early 1960s.
When our son was little, we would walk into town together as a family, sometimes to go to the school playground and sometimes to visit the ice cream stand. One autumn, I noticed red leaves on a branch against a brilliant blue sky. I later took a photograph, and some years later it became the center of a quilt.
I used bleach and a fine permanent marker for leaf details. The branches are knotted in places. I then added a border of pieced leaves. It is all hand appliqued and hand quilted.The fabrics are all hand dyed, some purchased and some I dyed.
I also have a nice collection of handkerchiefs featuring leaves, and have always planned to make an entire hanky quilt of leaves!
The trees are still green here along the West Michigan lake shore. A little red is showing here and there, so I expect a glorious riot of color is to come. Nature's last hurrah before its long sleep.
