Tahoe

My family went to Lake Tahoe in California in August. I hadn't been there in quite a few years, and boy has it changed. There are parts of it that are so built up and resort-y, it almost breaks my heart. However, with their usual forward-thinking, the Californians saw this coming, and there is still plenty of protected wilderness out there, thank goodness. (One of the things I still miss terribly about California is how there are parks and open spaces everywhere. Even in the middle of the Bay Area, there are parks to hike and hang out in where one would never even know one was smack-dab in the middle of a city. ) Wish the same could be said of Texas. The parks here are bulging with people every weekend because most of the open land is still privately owned. I consider this to be rather tragic. I'm really hoping that it will change in my lifetime...but we'll see.

Anyway (sorry for that tangent) back to Tahoe. Of course we went hiking, and on one of the hikes we saw these trees covered with moss. Well, it just so happens that that moss is one of my favorite colors. I LOVE how it looks against the grey of the trees, so I snapped several photos.

Of course the sky was also spectacular - the perfect blue with just the correct amount of clouds.

And then there were these flowers, in one of my favorite shades. They glow!

Finally, there was a spot that had obviously been burned previously. It had grown back so beautifully - it looked like it had been planned.

(Landscape by Mother Nature)

A few days later my sister in law, a master sewist whom I am slowly indoctrinating into the quilting world, went to a pretty sketchy fabric store (it was located in a long-term motel)! I wasn't too impressed until I saw the peppered cottons, Ooh la la - the colors - the richness - the texture - it was magical. And it just so happened that they had all the perfect colors to match my hike around Tahoe. So naturally I was compelled to purchase some.

I couldn't even wait until I got home to start sketching ideas, but alas, I could not come up with something organic-looking that I liked, So I gave up. A couple of days after I got home it hit me - I didn't have to make a nature-y type piece, the colors were the inspiration. So I came up with this drawing.

Nope it doesn't look a thing like Tahoe. But I love it. And it does have all the perfect colors that I saw on the hike. It looks pretty simple, but like every idea I have, it's way more complicated to put together than one might think. (Sigh) Oh well, the truth is, that's the way I like it. I love a challenge. It's going pretty well, too, although slowly as I am working on several projects at once right now, just because I feel like it. Here's what's done so far.

So that's Tahoe. I'm not even going to try to think about the quilting of it yet. although I certainly won't mind if an idea pops into my head sometime soon. It's got a lot of space, but I know I don't want to do anything too too heavy- it's a graphic piece and I want to stay with that feeling. It will be approximately throw sized when it's finished. And the best thing is that I'll have quite a bit of fabric left over from it to make some other thing. (And yeah, I already have an idea.) :)