When I made those three little quilts for my nieces last year, I realized that I wanted to make a bigger landscape quilt. One of my longtime friends really liked the purple and blue mountainy one, and I decided to try my hand at designing one from my own pattern.

Last spring I took a portraiture art class, and one of the key things I learned was how to look at shadows, and what colors to use for them. My professor showed us how in flesh tones, a nice dark purple color is the perfect shadow, and sometimes a dark green will work. I decided that I might like to try making one of the photographs I took of the Watchman in Zion National Park into a quilt. However, I’ve never made a more artistic quilt, so I wanted to warm up with something simple to test colors.

My husband and I went to shoot the moonrise because it’s pretty gorgeous around here, and when I got home and saw this picture, I knew it was the perfect inspiration for my next quilt’s colorway.

Okay, I know, the finished quilt looks nothing like this photo. Still, I enjoyed having a muse while I made it. I would love to figure out how to better capture a moonrise sometime.