Stephenie Meyer Quilt: The Meadow

I reached the edge of the pool of light and stepped through the last fringe of ferns into the loveliest place I had ever seen. The meadow was small, perfectly round, and filled with wildflowers – violet, yellow and soft white. Somewhere nearby, I could hear the bubbling music of a stream. The sun was directly overhead, filling the circle with a haze of buttery sunshine. I walked slowly, awestruck, through the soft grass, swaying flowers, and warm, gilded air. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 259

I miss brown.  Everything that’s supposed to be brown – tree trunks, rocks, dirt – is all covered up with squashy green stuff here. - Bella Swan, Twilight, pg 228

When we were divvying up blocks for this quilt, I knew immediately I wanted to make a cute little meadow.  Meadows covered in wildflowers in the afternoon sun are my ideal place to be.  Edward’s Meadow was my first foray into designing my own Paper Pieced Pattern.  Since I was only going to be working with a 5” square I wanted to keep it simple.  I had seen Wanda’s cute little triangle trees from her Forks Sign block, and decided that’s what I wanted mine to be.  I sketched it out on graph paper, scanned it in, then drew the lines and colored the pattern in Photoshop Elements.   I’ve been playing with Photoshop for years, but this is the first time I ever even used the drawing tool.  After lots of googling, asking the hubby (who uses Photoshop CS for work), and trial and error, I was happy with my design after a few days.  Fabric picking is always one of my favorite parts of a project.  I zeroed in on most of the fabrics right away (love that fairy frost for the stream sparkling in the sun) but the hard one was the meadow itself.  I searched all the local stores and some online, but couldn’t find something that was green with bits of violet, yellow and white.  I finally used a kid’s novelty print I’d had for years.   It’s a flannel, which I wasn’t sure I’d like, but in the end it’s cute, as I envision the meadow being.  I appliquéd a brown log (with green spots for moss) on top to fill in some of the space.