Moonflower Paradise in Uncle Bob’s Backyard

My uncle Bob did jewelry making and he’s made me some jewelry, so I wanted to make a wall hanging of things he loved. So, I selected things in his back yard that he loved.

One book I read by Sandra Meech, said you need to do a mind map of what you are trying to express. That means writing down key words, and then brainstorming ideas that go with it. I do that. For this quilt, I immediately jumped on the moonflower theme (that seemed to be an important love of my Uncle Bob’s that I wanted to include in this piece), jotting down ideas going with it of: night-time moonflower blooming, moon, and walnut. The first thing I envisioned was a piece of fabric that I had purchased of walnut and dark gray, with foliage, leaves, flowers in it.

I decided to drape the moonflowers around a moon, using the walnut fabric to represent night-time, dusk to dawn. I wanted to show a gradual shifting to daytime on the right where I wanted to put the second element of this piece – the paw paw trees. So I came up with the background design, which is supposed to represent going from dawn to daylight.

I then added the key words of turquoise, water, lilies, goldfish, and I had the “rest of the story”. I then pulled together some fabrics that I thought might be appropriate for what I wanted to do. I laid them out, changed them with other fabrics and finally came up with an image of the colors I wanted to use. The goldfish helped me pull in some “pumpkin orange”.

I needed to study and research moonflowers, as I have never seen any and have no photos, so I used the internet.

Paw Paws were easier, because my husband also planted two small paw paw trees that had been started from seeds. I went out and photographed the leaves, and was lucky enough to find some fruit, which also ended up as a star in this quilt. I missed the flowering stage of the tree, so had to research that on the internet, in order to make them realistic to nature.

One element of composition is to repeat colors from one area of the quilt to another to allow the eye to follow the colors around the quilt, to move from one area of the quilt to another, rather than jerk from one unrelated area to another. By choosing the orange and white fish, it allowed me to pull the “sky” color down into the bottom of the quilt. I added more of a “trail” for the eye, by adding the beige sky fabric as a reflection in the middle “top of the water” section.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this quilt, and I know it will find a good loving home.