An odd combination? Perhaps not – I find when I’m teaching that many of my students are as keen on gardening as they are about quilting. As am I. Our problems arise in the months from about April to October when we are desperate to get out into the garden or greenhouse, but we also have quilts we want to make and classes we want to attend – planning our garden plots, plotting out quilting plans; digging, cutting; sowing seeds, sewing seams; planting borders, quilting borders; edging lawns, binding quilts. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week.
Planning a garden and planning a quilt have similarities, not least in the use of colour. Do you go for a muted palette, a limited palette, a riotous mix of clashing colours or are you more restrained?
Colour choices vary with the seasons as well, from the blues and yellow of spring, through the vibrant purples, pinks and reds of summer to the oranges and russets of Autumn; not to mention the red berries so redolent of Christmas and wintertime.
Who but Mother Nature would put this red and this purple next to each other? Or this pink and yellow? Neither of them a colour combination you would first think of for a quilt, but subdued (slightly) by varying shades of green foliage and a perhaps a blue sky as well, they work – as do the plant combinations in the garden. And I just love the bright orange rhododendron against the brilliant blue sky; but would I put it a quilt? I don’t know.
Our quilting colour choices can be influenced by nature and the seasons more than we realise perhaps.
The photos here have been taken over the years in my garden(s) and at Mottisfont, Trentham Gardens, RHS Wisley, The Dorothy Clive Gardens and Westonbirt Arboretum.
Beautiful pictures. I love gardening, too, which does take time away from quilting in the summer but I do make up for it in the colder months.
Wow..beautiful garden Chris.