Bird of Paradise
by Fred

Bird of Paradise flowers are intriguing, especially if you don't live in the more tropical climates and only see them in bouquets! Their brilliant colors and spiked shapes blend well with tropical, oriental or art nouveau themes. The first four designs can be used to create a picture, the front of a tote bag or the center piece of a table mat. You could also combine these four squares with the other designs stitched on black fabric to make a large wall hanging or centerpiece. The Strelitzia reginae is the species we are most used to seeing with its vibrant orange flowers. A lessor known variety of Strelitzia reginae is Mandela's Gold and has blue and yellow flowers as shown below in the last design.

I combined one of the flowers with a tropical fabric to create a fun purse to show how versatile these designs can be.

The medium size picture, shown below is 10x10 inches and the large would be 12x12 inches without borders.