My sweet Mother in Law died last week. She lived with us and she had dementia. Although I do not miss the dementia, I DO miss her. She was a sweet and giving person. We are trying to work through the grief and the life changes and I have not had a lot of strength to do art but I did have to do my work on the round robin that we do for our altered book club. So I decided to use fabric leaves for my friend, Linda's book. I also found some fabric that my friend, Dorothy in the altered book club gave me. I did a stitch on the fabric that goes through the paper so the stitch could not be as pretty as my quilting stitches are usually done on fabric but for this layout, I think it still suits it. I used a quote that surprised me because it was written in 1899 - not modern times! I watercolored the paper and then stamped over the watercolors. The picture is a scene in the Great Smoky Mountains. I love those mountains and long for some time there to heal my grieving soul.
The quote says, " I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote calling to the yellow dawn , my cares fall from me - I am happy." ~Hamlin Garland. McClure's, February 1899
