Red Canyon, Glenwood Springs, Colorado

While in the USA for several weeks, I worked on a small hand stitched piece. It was the view from one of the motels I stayed in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The local quilt shop had some fabric that just matched the colour of the hills, and so I started.

Had to needle turn the hill cut outs, then tried cretan stitch and buttonhole stitch to create ridges and valleys.

A running thread using a varigated copper coloured thread, I tried to recreate the rock layers or strata. I als wanted to show the variants in the levels due to earth movement over the millions of years.

In Cortez, we had the most amazing thunderstorms in the afternoon, and lightning lit the skys. In Alburqueque, the evenings were spent spotting the lighting again, so I had to put this in the quilt. I had some blue crochet cotton, so running stitch to create the cloud and wind movement. By separating out the white dye section, feather stitched the lightning.

Lying next the pool in Kingman, AZ, had an hour to do some needlework, so worked on the lower hill using feather stitch, daisy chain flowers. The Van Dyke created "trees".

I couldn't remember how to do French Knots, so had to wait until I got back to NZ. Of course, that is where it lay, until I fished it out, looked up how to do french knots and finished it.

Everytime my wee boy sees this quilt he tells me he wants to go back to America, and just to see the lightning storms.