It's amazing how fast 3 weeks can fly by!! Just after posting 3 weeks ago, I was hired by the new owners of our former greenhouse. They are starting things all over due to our failure over a year ago, and most of the equipment, etc. was sold off. The new owners have transformed the storage barn into a gift shop- big change, there will be a flower shop in the main garage building, and some of the greenhouses will be full of plants again. Much of my time has been spent pouring over plant catalogs and availability lists and planning what will be needed to get things going again.
Ken and I did take a couple days off to spend a day at the Philadelphia Flower Show. We live just under 4 hours from there, and Ken's daughter lives in Philly now. We were able to see all of our granddaughters, while seeing the flowers, and stayed over night before coming home. It's been a while since we've seen the girls- the two youngest aren't very little any more. It was a very long day, with the ride down, then walking through the show till it ended that night. Here are a few pictures.
This was a great display- I'd love my back yard to look like this… A girl can dream
Here is a photo of a display that used a tuba for a water fountain, the rest of the brass section was used for another fountain. The theme was based on New Orleans and Jazz.
The next Photo shows a tree in bloom, possibly a cherry. Great to see spring blooms while things are so muddy and brown outdoors.
The last of these photos, shows a great garden gate with colored Heucheras at it's base and lilies blooming next to it.
I thought these chairs looked great- flowers in the yard even if the plants aren't blooming.
I called this Photo "Marla's dress", because Marla (Ken's daughter) thought it would make a great wedding dress if she ever got married again. The skirt has a base of curly willow branches, with a moss bodice, and other foliage and flowers as decoration.
This took a while to do- I took over 300 photos at the show, and many of them were closeups of Orchids, and other flowers. There were some really gorgeous varieties of Orchids- this is only a small number of the photos I took.
The color orange might just be growing on me more. These Orchids and Rhododendrons were in real yummy shades of orange with apricot. The variety of Orchid must be fairly popular, there were a lot of these in different displays. The Rhododendron was just about the same shade as the Orchids.
And Now Back to Quilts:
I took down the photo of the full view of the quilt, just found it is to remain secret till displayed if chosen for a showing. Left what I wrote, though. It is where a few more of the photos from the flower show ended up. I had been trying to design a quilt for a show with the theme of "The Voice Within", dealing with where our artistic voice comes from. I have spent most of my life with flowers and gardens, and found an old photo of me holding what else, but a flower in my hand. It was a rose, but when I photo collaged the flowers around myself, I changed the flower to one of the Osteospermum daisies from another photo used. I got the idea for this composition after the flower show. Nothing like doing things last minute- it had to be done and photographed by the end of today.
I left the closeup shot of the quilt. Whole quilt is 27 1/2"x32" in size. I was really glad I found the fabric I used for the border in my stash…… It is just the right combo of blues to go with the flower photos I took with blue sky as the background. The deep rose, deep blue, and pink corner squares are batiks from a square exchange with my quilt guild. The timing was great. The photos on this quilt are printed on cotton fabric.
I figure my artistic voice began when I was very young, helping my mother in the gardens. Flowers have been such a big part of my life, that it is no wonder most of my quilts are inspired by them.
Now back to my hole…. More planning, ordering, etc. to do for the greenhouses. Hanging out with more flowers means more inspiration!!
