Saturday, July 20, 2013

A Quilt of my Own Design (More or Less)

I wanted a modern, clean looking king sized quilt with a sunflower theme, so I spent a couple hours on the web looking at museum and google images of sunflower quilts.  I found an asymmetrically designed wallhanging with new york beauty pieces along 2 edges and a sunflower design in the middle.  I used that design for inspiration and in the stash of books and patterns, found a paper pieced new york beauty unit with a large center.  Using lots of scrappy yellow/gold/orange fabrics, I paper pieced the units, hand appliqued them on my background, and used narrow green borders.  In the center, I also hand appliqued the stems and angular leaves.   I wanted angular because I intended to use a smallish rounded flower pantograph for the long arm quilting.  You can see the pattern in the last picture.  I had a bit too much negative space in the center medallion above the sunflowers and when I went looking for a binding fabric because I had run out of the green, I found this gold batik with a butterfly pattern and they were, amazingly, the proper scale, so instead of having to create butterflies, I was able to cut and applique them directly onto my background.  I hope my niece likes it.  

7 comments:

  1. Great design and those batik butterflies are perfect. I especially like the square leaves.

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  2. I love the way its off set... Like there is a whole stack or quilts just laying there to cover up with or hang or play in

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  3. Congrats on designing this beautiful quilt! Lucky niece! I love the idea of piecing the flowers using the NY Beauty block. Design some more, design some more!

    In stitches,
    Teresa ;o)

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  4. Looks great! Love the offset flower. Nice fabric choices too.
    This is a special gift!

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  5. me gustan sus girasoles ¡¡¡ son tan geniales!!!
    saludos

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  6. I only got to see it folded until now. It's very beautiful! I'm sure they love it.

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