My sweet daughters picked me a bouquet of Texas wildflowers for Mother’s Day. My usual reaction to our wildflowers is “Pink Evening Primroses are my favorite! …except for Gaillardia…and Wine Cups are my favorite, too…and I really like Horsemint…and I love the Indian Paintbrush!” Really, they’re all my favorites.
Gaillardia is also known as Indian Blanket and Fire Wheel, and it’s the inspiration for the “Fire Wheel” in Crochet Bouquet (page 83). The Fire Wheels in the book are acidly bright. The real flower has two-tone petals of orangey-red with yellow on the outside edges.
Here’s my Fire Wheel with fairly life-like colors among the real thing. Next time I’m going to use a more saturated yellow.