Are you tired of pretty yet? I hope not because my favorite piece is coming up. This is the Dallas Star and it was amazing…

Notice those pumpkins lining the walk. There were hundreds of them in this part of the Arboretum. They led to the pumpkin patch the likes of which I have not seen before. More on that later. Now, back to the Dallas Star, much closer… It's icy looking!

We walked on a little ways and came upon the most exciting display of pumpkins that I have ever seen!

As you might imagine, this area was full of children who were (sometimes) happily posing for their parents. I was sorry that Elanor and Jack weren't with us. I suppose I might have been able to get Linda to pose among the pumpkins but neither of us thought that. 

You can walk through the houses. Pumpkins are visible from the inside as well. I don't know if they re-use the framework but I would suspect that they do. 

It was so much fun watching parents take pictures of their kids that I couldn't help be take a few myself. Don't you love the pink outfits with the orange pumpkins!

I really wanted to stand in front of these little girls' mother to take their picture, but that would have been presumptuous of me. They were so cute in their costumes and honestly, the view from the side is not bad at all. 

Linda spotted this family. Look close, down in the pumpkins… I'll bet that turned out to be a good picture.

And, last but not least, is this figure reclining on the grass back in a quiet area of the park. At first glance, I thought she was a sculpture. She must have been napping, or maybe reading, because she was motionless. Her footwear looks like work boots so maybe she was resting on her break. I think that is a knitted hat on her head… at any rate, I reminded of shapes Henry Moore might have sculpted.

The more photos I take of random people, the more I appreciate how different we all are. And how wonderful! 

These lovely white glass 'flowers' are more Chihuly-esque to my eye. There was surprisingly little of this sort of shape on display at the Dallas Arboretum.

I stood behind a mother taking a photo of her brood. It's a nice way to show you the scale of this glass sculpture – and to show how happy even teenagers were to be here!

I was headed to the ladies room when we saw the sculpture in the next photo. I might have gotten a better photo but was more interested in where I was headed :-).

Linda called this one 'snakes'. Now, if snakes don't agree with you, you might call it flames.

The butterflies loved this one too.

The next two photos show glass in waterfalls. Linda and I both loved these…

Look, they're dancing!

Here are more photos from the Dale Chihuyly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum. Not all of the glass was spiky…

There were butterflies in the air. Can you spot the one in this photo? It's a where's Waldo-ish photo.

I had fun including random people in some of my photos. People are so interesting to look at! This little girl in the colorful sweater looked so nice behind the purple spires. I'll show more random people intentionally photographed in other posts.

The green glass (below) was almost irridescent. It would have been spectacular with the sun on it. 

Look in the background in the photo above… see the squares in the distance?

There was a large, bronze lady in one of them. I love large bronze ladies. There were 3 ladies on a corner (at 63rd and Pennsylvania) in OKC near where Mom used to live. They always made me smile.

And this is what she's looking at (below). If you haven't clicked on any of the other photos in this post, you should click on this one to see it bigger. Really, isn't that deep blue sky reflected in the water amazing!?

I'll share more photos tomorrow. And, for those of you who read this far, I uploaded a new ePattern and a thread pack this afternoon. I'll probably send a newsletter with the announcement in the next few days. You're getting the news early! Click here to see what's new.

Linda (and Paul) were here for several days and we worked hard, designing her next two quilts. And then, yesterday, we got to play! We went to the Dallas Arboretum to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit. We didn't exactly know what to expect but it was a beautiful day and we figured at the very least the fresh air would be great. We were both blown away – it was so lovely! I took lots of photos and you will want to see a lot of them so I'm going to spread them out over several posts.

This is not something you'll see elsewhere. It is site-specific and so amazing. The plantings were designed to work with the glass sculptures. Some of the pieces were small and intimate like these orange 'sprouts' and some where just huge and stunning – like that 30' spire in the distance.

One of my favorite photos is this one, with those yellow spikes against a clear blue sky… FYI – click on these photos to see them bigger.

Linda and I both loved the way the colors in the plants worked with the colors in the glass…

I want these in my front yard! I cannot afford them and I don't think they could handle a Texas hail storm but still, I want some. I'll share more tomorrow because in 12 minutes we have 12 folks joining us for dinner. Thank goodness Steve is the one of us in charge of the kitchen. I just made the house pretty.

Continuing from yesterday…

I didn't show you the stack of rainbow solids that I intended to use for the flowers! Here they are. Pretty!

I decided against drawing a pattern for the flowers. While they will be similar in shape and size, I like that the fact that each one will be different.

The black and white hex flowers are going to function as flower centers. I placed a hex flower on top of the flower fabric (on top of my sandboard) and I drew a flower around the hex flower.

Each of these flower shapes has 6 lobes, just as a hex flower has six hexes around a center hexagon. It's a nice fit.

I cut 36 flowers from my stack of rainbow solids. Orange and red and pink and purple and blue flowers… You know what? Too many colors. It was hard to look at which is never a good sign.

The blues and purples worked the best so I cut more flowers from those colors. I put them on the wall and the quilt was nice, but missing something. It needed warm colors!

And leaves and stems…

I really wish I could show you all nine blocks on the wall. They are looking happy! But I can't because 1) this quilt will probably be in a book and 2) if you see it now, you won't be excited later when you see it finished. It will be old news and old news is not exciting.

I have more fabric to cut tonight and then I should be able to start appliqueing. Hoorah! Just in time because Linda is coming to Texas and we're going to be busy during the day and stitching at night.

Linda and I are working on what comes next, after the next book that is already in the editing phase. I do the drawing in Illustrator, on my computer, so I am very grateful that my computer is happy. 🙂

My computer appears to be fixed! Hooray! I've upgraded my primary computer to mountain lion and all is well. Can you hear me knocking wood? The office computer is now being upgraded and then the laptop. I find it amazing that I actually need 3 computers, but I do. 

With the computer humming along, I turned my attention to the quilt on the wall. Remember Tick Tock? I con't show the full quilt, but I can show some interesting parts. I got the backgrounds finished and had to decide what sort of applique was called for. 

You wouldn't know this, but I don't often work this way. I usually start with the whole quilt drawn, then I color it with fabric. Designing on the fly is harder for me — both challenging and exciting. I put some vinyl over a block and doodled…

Nice, but I've done more than one block like this before. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm in the mood to change it up a bit.

I sketched and came to no comclusions. It did become obvious to me that this quilt was going to have flowers on it. I like flowers. They are colorful, pretty, and I enjoy the circular patterns that are almost always present.

I pulled out a stack of solids, arranged like a rainbow and combined them with the little black and white hex flowers that I've been making. I chose a color from the stack that made me happy and pinned it and a hex flower to a block:

Now what? I'll tell you more tomorrow.