Autumn As It Oughta Be

Autumn looks different from year to year, based on the science of leaf chemicals interacting with weather.  No matter how many times they explain it, I can't remember if vivid colors come from:

• cool, dry weather
• hot, dry weather
• cool, wet weather
• hot, wet weather
• and when does this weather have to occur?

It's all too much for me, so I decided to make a quilt with colors that I think every autumn should have.  Then if the view out the window doesn't suit me, I'll just go stare at my quilt.

This quilt is 12 inches wide and 13 inches tall.  The dark purple fabric in the curved bottom is from Cherrywood Fabrics.  The rest of the fabric (with the exception of the center strip of batik and the yellow oak leaf in the bottom right) is from SteelWool Studio. 

Here's how I made the leaves:

1. Make a sandwich of two layers of fabric and double-sided fusible web.
2. Draw a leaf shape with a removable marker (my favorite is a Frixion pen).
3. Free-motion stitch around the edges of the leaf twice, to make a nice thick border.
4. Free-motion the veins in the leaf.
5. Trim around the edge of the leaf, being careful not to snip through any of the outline stitches.
6. Press the leaf to remove the Frixion pen marks.
7. Attach to the quilt with beads.

The smallest "leaves" are resin beads.  Then I threw on a real live acorn, just for good karma.

I wanted realistic-looking leaves that were a variety of shapes, so I paged through our 1968 copy of Trees of North America and sketched them fairly well, I thought.  Now that I'm trying to identify them in the book, I no longer see much resemblance.  Aside from two kinds of oak and the ginkgo, don't ask me what they are!! 

ENJOY THE FALL!!!!!