Small Pieces: Trees, Lovely Trees!

Although the trees have shed their leaves and stand bare against the grey sky, they are still lovely.  Like beautiful people, they "have good bones."  They surround the studio, which is why I must be constantly sorting through scraps for appliqué and embroidery whose end always reveals hints of the arboreal.

This patched-together tree has puzzled me since I began working on it.  I  tried embroidering a background, but it was so out-of-place that I snipped the silk threads and picked that idea out of the linen before it was half-way finished.  There are little beads at the tips of the branches, which I put there as a reminder of how beautiful the trees can be when they sparkle with rain or frost.  The trunk is made from scraps of vintage cotton prints from old quilt scraps salvaged from a trip to an antique shop.

Here you may see me in full tree-hugger mode!  It takes only a few lines of heavy cotton to "paint" a tree against the sky.  I had the most fun putting the little slips of fabric under the main ground to form a soft frame for the tiny piece:

Many years ago I made the piece below as a rug for a miniature house.  I renovated the small dwelling for a very particular (imaginary) resident, Miss Buelah Blondeaux (my imaginary renovation company was called "N.Claiborne and Associates").  Beulah's husband, Payne, travelled the world and collected some oddities that she was constantly trying to integrate into her more toned-down sensibility.  The  embroidered rug was one such incorporation.  The little strip of trees at the top of this rectangle, with the moon behind, has always been one of my favorite looks at winter trees (this is a small portion of the much larger rug).  Interestingly enough, it is this view of the moon I have from our present home, with the high clerestory windows that allow me to follow its progress through the evening and night as it moves from the tangle of bare branches to the freedom of the star-dotted sky:

The trees around our house have been trimmed of dead branches, thinned, and are generally well-kept.  There are nests that have not been apparent until the leaf drop, both of squirrels and birds.  Raccoons, rabbits-- an entire community of animals depends on our tiny stand of trees!  I would hate losing one.  Just a week ago, another tree fell across the street from us.  What a loss!