After making several of these foot-square sunflower quilts my sister shared a half yard of sunflower fabric with me. When I saw Christy last month, she handed me a scrap of another sunflower fabric. It came together. . .
I shared the beginning of this piece here. The half yard of light-colored sunflower batik provided a perfect backdrop for the portion of a large sunflower on the darker batik fabric. Here it is well on its way.
For the first time, adding stems to the flowers made complete sense. I think the stems make the two fabrics more of an equal partnership here. What do you think?
I used 4 threads on this project: a variegated Madeira metallic for the large sunflower, 50-wt. DMC yellow-gold for the small sunflowers and some of the background quilting, 60-wt. Mettler thread in rust for leaves and the stem on the large sunflower and a 60-wt. Mettler in a neutral color for the rest of the background quilting.
As often happens, I had one set of beads out to fill the center of the flowers but changed my mind mid-course.
New images of the entire series can be seen on my gallery.
Your machine quilting is so good. Good control. 🙂 Sharon
Thanks Sharon.
Franki, what do you use to mark your quilts? If you tell me you do it all without marking, I’m going to have to sit down and contemplate your virtuosity and your amazing work.
I use a water-erasable fabric marking pen to position the large quilt designs only. In this case, the large leaves and the small leaf on the lower right-hand sunflower. The rest of the quilting is done free-motion without marking. Some day I’ll be good enough to quilt without marking at all. Some day.
W.O.W. I’m green with envy
These little gems just get better and better. Such delicious eye candy.
Thanks Sara! I think it may be time to take this idea and work larger. I’ll keep you posted.
Beautiful – I love this! =D
Yet another lovely piece from your hand.
(If I am not mistaken I think you have only uploaded the detail photo of the quilt into your gallery.)
Oops. Thanks for catching that Gurli! I’ll get that fixed.