Autumn in Texas and Mesquite Trees

So much is said about how the south doesn't have an autumn. How it goes from summer to spring without anything in between. That's silly, obviously. Our trees go dormant, a lot shed their leaves, and so on. It's just not so flashy or showy.

We make up for it in other ways - bringing a stereo-typical northern autumn into our homes and jobs as much as we can, as though we can cast some sort of autumn-summoning spell through sheer volume of FALL AUTUMN FALLING LEAVES PUMPKINS SCARECROWS, like the five points of a star in a summoning circle. (No, this paragraph isn't getting out of hand, why do you ask?)

I cannot claim to be any different. I get sucked into the whole "FALL" summoning stuff. This is my first entry for the year. It started as "What can I do with these strips?" and turned into a wall hanging that celebrates autumn. It's nothing grand, but I like it. The quilting is of falling leaves, of course. (What else could it be?)

And also of course, one quilt inspires another. Unlike a good many people, I love mesquite trees (aka Devil trees... very dramatic). They are survivors. They have massively long taproots, and actually return nitrogen to the soil, instead of removing it, like most trees/plants. Combine my love of mesquites with autumn in Texas, I want to make a mesquite quilt.

Growing up, we had a mesquite in the front yard. It stabbed all of us in the feet repeatedly, and picking up limbs and branches before mowing wasn't terribly fun. Outwardly, a full-grown mesquite isn't terribly attractive to most people - a rough and harsh black bark, a trunk that splits low, and heavy creaking limbs that stab and grab. Oh, and the beans. Sometimes it's like mowing over a rock.
But the inside is gorgeous. A beautiful red-brown with a clear grain, that dries evenly in all directions, and ends up strong - enough to be called Texas Ironwood.

My father offered to make me a quilting frame out of mesquite. Of course I said yes! OMG YES YES YES!  And I want the first quilt to be quilted on it to be an homage to the mesquite tree. Blacks, red-browns, and several shades of green - from the bright spring green of early leaves, to the darker, almost olive-y green. So I guess it's on to the planning stages for YET another quilt.

In other news, I've finally started working on Heart of (Lime)Stone. It seems that I am slowly amassing a list of quilts about Texas. *shrug* So be it!

S