Time to Take in the Beauty of a New Spring

Since I live in the north, the changing seasons are clearly visible.
Now, spring is approaching: the last patches of snow have disappeared, and soon the first flowers will emerge.
As life returns after a long winter, the world fills with a vivid green.

Alongside my anticipation of warmer days and color returning to the landscape, there is also a quiet melancholy, the sense that this fleeting moment is already beginning to pass. As the American poet Robert Frost (1874–1963) writes in Nothing Gold Can Stay, the poem that inspired this piece: “Her early leaf’s a flower; but only so an hour.”
Frost uses the passing of spring as a metaphor for life’s briefness, urging us to value what exists in the present moment. It is something I have to remind myself of, especially when I catch myself thinking, even now, “this too shall pass.” Instead, I try to tell myself: it is time to take in the beauty of a new spring – right here, right now.
That can be challenging for me, not only in relation to the seasons, but in life itself.

“Time to Take in the Beauty of a New Spring” is freemotion appliquéd, freemotion quilted, and hand embroidered. The background is pieced.
The lace at the bottom is painted green and gold with fabric paint.
I also painted the stems with gold before embroidering.
The little flower at the top was probably one of my ancestor’s sample patches. I have now given it new life as a flower on my quilt.