Alice's Surprise Quilt--Surprise in the Midst of Drought

The day after our last “reveal,” I went for an early morning walk, despite a prediction of a high of 100+° that day.  Much to my astonishment, just a block from our house I spied some lavender and purple wild flowers growing in a patch of dead weeds in the corner vacant lot.  How could they be blooming in the middle of the worst drought we have suffered in Texas in many decades? They were a total surprise!  Then I had an ah-ha moment:  I’d take a photo and base my Surprise quilt on those brave little wild flowers.  I used an enlargement of one of these pictures as a guide for composition and fabric colors. 

In constructing my Surprise quilt, I used the following materials and techniques:  For the background, I used a piece of hand-painted fabric, left over from another quilt, for the brownish yellow background.  The techniques I used included:  fusing raw-edge appliqués (the weeds); fusing and zig-zag stitching appliqués (the flowers and leaves); couching two different yarns for more weeds, to give dimension to the quilt; and beading for still more dimension (flower stamens). I hand-quilted with a running embroidery stitch, randomly placed, choosing a brown and an olive green embroidery floss.  The quilt is bound and backed with a multi-colored batik in the same colors as the dead weeds and the flowers’ leaves.