This past week I was in a studio creating the last two of the Four Seasons series, Spring and Summer. The fun part of these pieces is all the colors I used to represent the flowers.

In spring in the Midwest, we have these flowers that bloom really early called spring ephemerals. They are delicate spring plants that come out before the trees have leaves. This way the sunlight gets to the ground and the plants pop up. But they are short lived and you have to time it just right to see them. One of my favorites are the gentians. They are the most beautiful pale lavender with the brightest green leaves. This is what I was going for with the Spring piece.

Throughout the summer, our backyard prairie has a cycle of flowers that start with white flowering penstemon going to lavender bee balm and ending with a spectacular show of all the yellow rudbeckias and purple coneflowers. We have a few red cardinal flowers in our water garden so I added them in for a variety of colors in the Summer piece.

Again I worked in the studio using my favorite process, pulling out the fabric and placing the pieces on my cutting board to fill out the design. Then I sewed the strips into blocks of fabric and then I sewed the blocks together to fill out the design. Lastly, I cut the square to size, stretch gently around the canvas and secure with a staple gun.

The one interesting challenge for this design is I wanted the sky to all be the same size for each of the Four Seasons. This did not happen with the Spring piece so I needed to take all the staples out the back of the frame and realign it so I had equal skies for each piece. It was not an easy task and I will make sure to measure twice before stapling to the frame ever again.

I’m considering having this series available in prints for the holiday season. They would be available in different sizes with a framed option as well. I will post more details on Instagram and in Studio Notes next week. I am debating what other items might be interesting: pillow covers or phone cases. Not sure yet.

My project starting next week for the entire month of November is to complete all of my 25 Days series pieces from my Every Day Project and wrap them around canvases. I will use different size canvasses based on what would look good for the design. Wish me luck!