Holiday Colors, 2

Back in prehistoric times, when I was a kid, Santa put oranges in my family's stockings. A friend mentioned that Santa did the same for her, too. Santa must have some kind of tradition. We kids were puzzled--what good were oranges when candy would have been so much better? You certainly couldn't play with an orange. It just made a big round lump in the toe of the stocking...every Christmas.

Fast forward to centuries later: now I can understand the miracle of oranges because I have been picking them for the last month or so in my orchard.



Lush, sweet, juicy fruit that starts green and slowly turns to a deep red-orange as the
temperatures go down. A cheerful color against green leaves in the middle of the gray of winter. A feast for the eyes, not to mention the healthy aspect of all that natural vitamin C.





Right in season, a bowl of oranges served as a subject for the Sketch Club last week. A blind sketch first.







Then a "half" blind sketch (one eye peeking) with colored pencils added.




The lovely colors tempted me to turn to my textile sketchbook. I took out my handy glue stick and attached 
a floral cotton print from a flea market blouse to a notebook page, then sewed it down. 

I cut directly into the fabrics (very liberating, I felt like a kindergartner) and laid down the shapes, which I glued and stitched by machine. 

I added the text, "Holiday Colors in my Garden,"

and some machine embroidery, scribbling with the machine.

Santa is right; every stocking should have a beautiful orange in the toe.

Linked to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" and Leah's "Free Motion Quilting Project."