A Painted Quilt

Good Morning,

Today, instead of adding a new design, I'm showing you a painted quilt that I just finished. Click on the photo to see it larger.

This started out as a piece of white fabric. I marked four circles, one for the flower center, one to contain the flower, one to contain the outer circular border of tiny circles and the outermost circle. I then divided the background space around the circle as well as the horizontal and vertical lines forming the bottom portion of the quilt. Everything was marked with a fine, graphite pencil.

Next, using free style quilting, I quilted the flower center using small, touching circles and black thread. Then I stitched the petals each with two smaller petals inside, again with black thread.

I switched to hot pink thread and put on my walking foot and stitched the circle around the flower center and the circle around the flower. I went around these several times to build up the stitch line. Next I added the petal border then the circles border around the flower, again with black thread and free motion quilting.

I then stitched all of the background area around the flower/circle using a wavy crosshatch in half of the sections and a swirls and arc design in the other sections. I then stitched the horizontal lines using my walking foot and the hot pink thread. I built up these lines by stitching over them twice.

I finished the quilting by adding the small flowers in the wide border and vines in the narrow border with tiny circles in the two tiny borders. Then I added the same designs in the lower portion that I had stitched in the background around the large flower.

I colored the whole thing in with markers using just five colors; red violet, lime green, blue green, yellow orange and metallic gold.

It was great fun!

I'll be teaching this technique at Great American Quilt Factory, August 20 & 27.

Till tomorrow,

Heather