My husband set up a trip for us at a time share called the Mayan Palace. It is close to Playa de Carmen. The compound, as I call it, is truly amazing. There are numerous pools or you can go to the beach. It had 6 different restaurants and we tried most of them while we were there. It also had a very well furnished fitness center which I did use every day. It made eating at the excellent restaurants a little easier on the waist line. The gardens in the compound were simply amazing. I think landscapers must think something like a quilter. By using different colors and different textures of plant leaves the gardens become so much more interesting. I am in the process of working on a quilt with a Mexican theme. I had several blocks sewn before I left for this trip but was hoping that I would get some more ideas while we were on this week long journey.
What I was looking for when I viewed the gardens were ideas for leaf shapes, colors and how the veins go through the leafs. When I am quilting the leaves on my projects I am often trying to come up with some different ideas on how to quilt the veins and what color or colors of thread to use. All of these leaves gave me inspiration.
Just as I found on many plants, using a variety of different fabrics on one area of my quilts makes them far more interesting than if I just used one fabric for all of the leaves on a project. 
The leaves on this plant were incredibly interesting. The colors, the shapes, the vein lines……
What an inspiration.
One of the things I don’t think to do when I am adding the quilting on my projects is to use a very light thread to quilt the veins on the leaves. Well, if it looks great in real life it should certainly look great in my quilts. 
And what about quilting the veins with pink thread?
This was growing along the bottom of a small tree. I love to sew circles so this inspired me. And I love the orange with the dark purple. How can you not be inspired?
Stay tuned for the next blog for more inspirational ideas…flowers, decorations, critters …. .