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. 
