"Cherry Blossom Snow" ( 41.5"W x 37.75"T) had an unusal beginning. A relative, and his family came up to visit in the mid-1990s during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. On the day we had planned to go down to see the trees, we awoke to find a wet blanket of snow dusting the ground.  Not to be outdone by Mother Nature, we went to see the flowers anyway. While walking among the trees along the Tidal Basin, I noticed the pale pink petals and the wet snow flakes both drifting downwards. For one brief moment, the sun came out. The shafts of sunlight bathed each petal and flake in a jewel-like glow. All too quickly, though, the sun was hidden once again by the clouds. This quilt tries to capture that fleeting instant.

     The first piece of fabric chosen for this piece was from a navy table runner embroidered in Asia. I cut out the appliquéd flowers and distributed them around in the sky. The rest of the fabric pieces quickly followed as if they knew their place. I dabbed yellow fabric paint in blotches around in the sky. I then sewed on tiny squares of pale pink chiffon over each paint blob, securing the squares with a bead. The result makes it look as if petals are gently floating through the air, backlit by shafts of sunlight. To add to the suggestion of shimmering light are shi-sha mirrors from India and dichroic glass buttons from Czechoslovakia.

     This quilt was one of the first successful ones in which I really tried to get dimensional. Many of the applied metal flowers are made of yards of twisted, bent wire to form chrysanthemums. Since they extend out about an inch, they made for difficult quilting. While buttons are always a problem, the thread was always getting hung up in one or more of the metal flowers. Speed in quilting was not even to be considered while completing this piece. One must be patient in one’s creative endeavors!

                  Detail photo is below in the comments section.

     You can see more of my art quilts at my web site at www.fiberfantasies.com