In search of color

It has been a dreary winter, dark, gray and wet, with hardly any snow to brighten the day. It's so hard to keep my spirits up when the world feels washed out, simply drained of life.

What's a quilter to do? For me it's time for a little stash enhancement. I am drawn to clear, bright colors, like a moth to a flame. The fabrics at the top of the post are the silks that I found in Sarasota. I bought almost every fat quarter on the shelf, leaving behind only the brown, gray and taupe. I felt bad for them, and I tried to add them to my stack, I really did. But I just couldn't do it.

Why do I need rick rack? I don't know, yet. But it had just arrived at the shop when I was there to pick up my new machine, and it was so joyful! What am I going to do with it? Well, I think that's a question that no self-respecting quilter needs to answer.
Having chosen a word for this year, I decided that I needed a reminder, for those times when I think I must have lost my entire mind to get on a plane, meet up with people I have never met and put myself at their mercy.

To make it, I used Corel (my fav graphic design program) to find a font to set the right tone, reversed it and printed it out on a sheet of the Wash Away Applique Sheets. I decided that the tiny inside curves would be no fun at all, so I separated the letters into two parts.

And then, since it's been nothing but gray and dreary, happy embroidery was definately called for. The background is microstippled with WonderFil's fantastically fine Invisifil, but I matched the colors so well that it hardly shows. That turns out to be a good thing, since I could hardly see where I was going