Q is for Quercus

In the previous post you may have noticed that the flag in the St. Peter's piece looks like it is floating above the surface of the quilt. Your eyes don't deceive you. I frequently like to add dimensional elements to my quilts. I made the acorns and some of the leaves dimensional in this piece.

This small quilt was made for an international challenge several years ago. The theme was the letters of the alphabet. I was randomly assigned the letter Q. Besides 26 American quilters, we also had 26 French and 26 Japanese quilters involved. For some time I wracked my brain to decide what word beginning with "q" could have meaning to all nationalities.

One morning, walking through my garden, it hit me. Botanical Latin. Even when people don't speak the same language, if they are gardeners, plant names can be shared and understood as the names are the same worldwide. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that the Latin name for oak, Quercus, was a beautiful choice. Everyone can relate to the strength of the oak tree that grows over many years from the small acorn seed.

Here is a close-up of the dimensional elements in "Q is for Quercus". In my next post, I'll give a short tutorial on how to make 3D leaves. they aren't very hard but very satisfying to experiment with.