Park rangers ask visitors to leave nothing behind but footprints. Quilters try, we really do, but a snip of thread has a way of following us everywhere, from the garden bench to the campsite picnic table. Stitchin' In Nature is the collection for the quilter who does her best thinking outdoors, full of blooming spools, park trail badges and a few woodland friends who know more about fabric than they let on.
Things that grow
In our garden, the flowers come with bobbins. Spool Blooms plants spools of thread on tall green stems like tulips, in soft red, blue and teal, rising out of a clump of leaves. Garden Stitcher covers a vintage machine in tiny white and pink blossoms while bees buzz around the spool pin. Seeds of Stitches lets big yellow sunflowers climb right over an old machine, and SewJourner follows a winding path through green hills to a machine waiting at the end, all framed inside a compass rose.
Trail badges from the parks
These look like the patches you collect at the visitor center. Shenandoah National Park shows a graceful deer standing among wildflowers with a note about stitching along Skyline Drive. Great Smoky Mountains stands a black bear on his hind legs in the same wildflowers, stitching in the Smoky mist. Stitchin' in Hocking Hills tucks a waterfall and a crackling campfire into a mossy gorge, Stitchin' in Kauai layers green cliffs in stripes above a golden beach and blue water, and Stitchin' at Mount Rainier puts a black bear by a quiet lake below the great snowy peak.
Wildlife sightings
Keep your eyes open on the trail. In How To... Hide Your Stash, a fox, a squirrel, a bear and a badger stand in a row wearing patchwork vests, and we are fairly sure those vests used to be somebody's fat quarters. The deer and the bear from the park badges count too. For a quieter hike, Patchwork Mountain Dreams lines up pine trees below teal and pink patchwork peaks, with a little sewing machine resting at their feet like a hiker taking a well-earned break.
For the quilter who sews under the open sky
These are for the quilter who brings her hand-sewing on every camping trip, the friend who pulls leaf colors from the woods into her next quilt and the one who plans every road trip around a scenic overlook and a quilt shop. You know who keeps a folding chair and a project bag in the trunk. Let her pick the trail, the bloom or the bear. And if a ranger ever finds a snip of thread on the path, it was definitely the squirrel.
Written by Jacqueline. Thanks for reading.
