Autumn Leaves

Autumn is such a non-event in Australia. Surrounded by evergreens, the season passes with little notice other than the fact that it's getting cold. Since it rarely drops below freezing here in Brisbane, the beginning of cold in autumn is only a little milder than the mild winter cold. Which is why this liquidamber tree at my mother's inspired me last week.

I wanted to make a patchwork rug for DH like this one we made for DD last visit, but the colours we had in the velvets were limited. That's one of the problems with sewing from recycled materials, you can't just go out and buy what you need to finish a project, you have to work with what you have. Not that I've had much luck with finding what I want in craft stores when I go looking. Anyway, as you can see when we made DD's quilt, most of the velvet was pinks and reds. I slowly pulled out a pile of other colours, browns, reds, and a tiny bit of orange, and eventually picked out all the other colours I had, and was left with a beautiful array of autumn colours, that inspired me to send DD out to pick an autumn leaf from the tree.

This is the rug that eventually worked it's way out of the materials, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out from a bunch of velvet that initially looked all pink. Because of all the agonising over colours and patterns, it took most of the day to complete this one, unlike DD's rug, which only took a few hours.

We used the bitty leftovers of the velvet to piece together the back, since none of the colours that were big enough to do it in once piece fitted in with the autumn theme.

These appliqued leaves added the perfect finishing touch I think, even though my Mum and Dad kept saying they were stars! Hopefully when we pull this rug out next autumn, as it starts to get cold, it will help us feel a little more autumny. Hopefully the little liquidamber's that I plan to dig up from around the base of my mum's tree and plant in our front garden will help as well.