When I first formed the picture for this quilt in my mind it was colored in the austere tones of December, black branches on a grey sky. Somehow I ended up with this riot of color, flame branches and lemon cloudlets against an impossibly blue view. I’m not necessarily disappointed, I am just baffled how I got here. I look at the cloth heaped on my cutting table, (from which I drew my palette) and see further reinforcement of my original intent. A pile of mostly greys and blacks with just a few swatches of blue, pink, red, yellow, meant for accent. It is almost as if I get drunk on the color layout process. I am so stimulated by the way a blue shifts with a red beside it that I grow giddy and irrational. Only when the last swatches of color are ironed in place do I stop spinning and begin to realize just what I’ve created. It’s like I’m the Victor Frankenstein of the quilting world.