Today I needed a color break. I’ve been frantically finishing the Stitch Vocabulary Book for three weeks, and I was terribly tired of computer work. So I sorted out the fabric I intend to bring to sale at Gems of the Prairie in May, That meant I set aside the pieces I wanted to work up.

Of course, that was an immense pile, Somewhere in it, I found this owl.

He really wasn’t lost. I knew he was around. I just wasn’t sure what pile. He was the third of three owls I made for a quilt that simply never worked.

I found several pieces that I thought would be amazing backgrounds. But a very strange thing happened. It wasn’t just that the fabric made the owl feel different. They actually started telling really different stories about him.

So this had a golden open door he’s going through.

Investigating a flower in the garden. Perhaps with small mice or butterflies.

Flying toward a red moon. Or is it a rose?

Is that a fire or a sunset? Is he flying towards it or in flight away from it?

Or somehow a moonlit winter night. Perhaps with snow. Or a flowering tree with moths?

I’m always astonished by hand-dyed fabric. It’s so versatile and offers so much to design. But I hadn’t seen it as a backdrop to a story. And that’s exactly what it did.

Which will I choose? I’m not sure yet. Normally I’m drawn to color. But there’s something fabulous about that winter moon. And while I work on it, perhaps it will tell me its story.