This week, the inspiration for Project Quilting 8 was the Carolina Lily. You can see the post here. The first thing I did was to do a little research on the web to see if that would spark an idea. And I found this beautiful picture.
With this picture in mind, I started thinking about how I was going to re-create this with fabric and thread. I could appliqué the flower using scraps, but appliqué isn’t my favourite thing in the world so I started thinking about a whole cloth quilt with very dense quilting in orange, red, yellow and green. But I’m not very good at drawing and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make my quilting look like a flower.
And then a lightbulb moment!! What if I created a pixelated image of the flower with fabric? I played with my graph paper and pencils for a little bit and came up with this.
My next step was to take out my orange, red, yellow and green scrap bins. I started by cutting 2” squares and laying them out on my cutting mat but still… something just wasn’t right.
So I paired my squares and created HSTs and loved that! Many little HSTs later and I had a mini quilt that somewhat resembled that original picture.
But once all those HSTs were sewn together, it still looked really blah to me and none of the fabrics I was auditioning looked good for the binding. Enter Kona White and a 5” border!
I think giving the piecing in the center a nice, clean white background allowed all those colours to shine. The white also brought order to the chaos and I find it’s now easier to see the Carolina Lily. I even asked my daughter to tell me what she saw when she looked at it (she had no idea what the inspiration was) and she immediately said "A flower!" And the Kona Charcoal I used for the binding frames everything like a picture frame!
When it came time to quilt it, I had a lot of fun. I didn’t want to add any more colour to this design so used Aurifil Dove (#2600) to quilt some flowers in the middle and Aurifil White (#2021) for some wood grain in the border. I am extremely happy with the results.
Quilt Stats:
I will be linking up over at Project Quilting for Challenge 8.2, over at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday and at Busy Hands Quilts for TGIFF.
With this picture in mind, I started thinking about how I was going to re-create this with fabric and thread. I could appliqué the flower using scraps, but appliqué isn’t my favourite thing in the world so I started thinking about a whole cloth quilt with very dense quilting in orange, red, yellow and green. But I’m not very good at drawing and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make my quilting look like a flower.
And then a lightbulb moment!! What if I created a pixelated image of the flower with fabric? I played with my graph paper and pencils for a little bit and came up with this.
My next step was to take out my orange, red, yellow and green scrap bins. I started by cutting 2” squares and laying them out on my cutting mat but still… something just wasn’t right.
So I paired my squares and created HSTs and loved that! Many little HSTs later and I had a mini quilt that somewhat resembled that original picture.
But once all those HSTs were sewn together, it still looked really blah to me and none of the fabrics I was auditioning looked good for the binding. Enter Kona White and a 5” border!
I think giving the piecing in the center a nice, clean white background allowed all those colours to shine. The white also brought order to the chaos and I find it’s now easier to see the Carolina Lily. I even asked my daughter to tell me what she saw when she looked at it (she had no idea what the inspiration was) and she immediately said "A flower!" And the Kona Charcoal I used for the binding frames everything like a picture frame!
When it came time to quilt it, I had a lot of fun. I didn’t want to add any more colour to this design so used Aurifil Dove (#2600) to quilt some flowers in the middle and Aurifil White (#2021) for some wood grain in the border. I am extremely happy with the results.
Quilt Stats:
- Pattern: my own design (inspired by the picture above)
- Size: 22” x 24”
- Fabrics: scraps (middle), Kona White (border), Kona Charcoal (binding)
- Thread: pieced with Aurifil #2600; quilted with Aurilfil #2600 and #2021 50 wt.
I will be linking up over at Project Quilting for Challenge 8.2, over at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday and at Busy Hands Quilts for TGIFF.
Genius! And beautiful!
ReplyDeleteYour project looks great - and the quilting is magnificent.
ReplyDeleteI love the approach you took to creating the lily in a mini quilt, and the woodgrain quilting looks fantastic!
ReplyDeleteI think you finished it off perfectly!
ReplyDeleteWow. I love it. You did an amazing job translating the flower to fabric.
ReplyDeleteThis has come up a bloody treat! Great ideas. THank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful. I love your design and your quilting.
ReplyDeleteAwesome creative process. I love the lily, but I also really love the woodgrain quilting in the white. Great finish!
ReplyDeleteI love this so much. Seriously. :)
ReplyDeleteNice version! Lovely quilting!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great pixelated lily!! Beautiful design and quilting!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful quilt! I love that you decided to make your own pattern. Your're going to be a quilt teacher very soon.
ReplyDeleteI love the quilting in the border.
ReplyDeleteI'm very impressed! This is FANTASTIC!
ReplyDeleteLove your interpretation of this! The colors are great! And your quilting is superb.
ReplyDeleteI love this! I agree that the white border really makes the flower motif stand out more and lets the vivid colors sing.
ReplyDeleteThis is wonderful! I love just how much difference the white border made! LOVE!
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous, gorgeous quilt, Izzy!! Well thought out and executed :) I totally agree the large white borders were perfect for allowing the center to really shine through and pop. Well done!!
ReplyDelete