Eight is Great - Project Quilting Challenge 8.1

The first challenge of the 8th season of Project Quilting was revealed on the first of the year as 8 is Great. 

Just before this announcement I had
been working on a quilt where I stitched a design into a circle that reminded me of a figure 8.  It also made me think of a flower.

So with that fresh in my mind, I decided I would make a small whole cloth quilt with eight of these figure 8 flowers on it.  Or maybe four of those and four flowers with 8 petals on them.  Good.  I had a plan in mind.  I would begin in the morning.

But when I woke up, while I was still drinking my first cup of coffee, I started thinking that maybe instead of just a plain whole cloth quilt, I would add a little bit of applique for the flowers.  Something cute and whimsical.

By the time I stepped into my sewing room, I had decided that if I was going to add applique, I needed something more than a plain piece of fabric for a background.

A few months ago, Grace Errea was the speaker at a meeting of the Tucson Quilter's Guild and she showed several quilts with beautiful, randomly pieced backgrounds so maybe this was my chance to try to do the same.  And I could use 8 different fabrics to create that background.

I used a stack and shuffle technique to come up with this.  I am really happy with it.  But it definitely doesn't say cute and whimsical to me.  I needed a new plan for what to add to this background.

I decided on an 8 petal flower.  After a bit of investigating online, I discovered that several varieties of Dahlias have only a single row of 8 petals on them. Bingo!  I based my flower applique pattern on those.

I have long been a fan of  Melinda Bula's work.  So once I got the flower petal pieces cut out and fused onto the background I knew I had the perfect opportunity to try some Melinda Bula inspired thread sketching.

I used several different thread colors to add highlights, shading and texture.  SO FUN! I thought about using 8 threads in the flower to keep with the 8 is Great theme.  But I lost track at about four, so I don't know how many threads I ended up with.

 And it all really came together when I added the center applique and yellow/orange thread.

After I was done with the thread sketching, I loved the flower, but thought the background area was too large in proportion to the flower.  But I didn't want to trim any of it away either.  So I decided to add a frame around the flower.  If I had thought of this in the beginning I would have pieced it in.  But at this point, that would have meant ripping out seams I had already sewn and I'm never in favor of that if I can help it.

Since I was in applique mode, I would applique the framing strips too.  I decided to quilt the background first and then add the framing strips which worked out great.  Once the framing strips were stitched down, the quilt was ready for trimming and binding.  Not bad for two days work!

What a terrific start to this challenge series.  I got to use two new techniques I've been wanting to try out and I ended up with a piece I'm very proud of!

Now to figure out where to hang this little beauty....

Dahlia

for Project Quilting 8 is Great challenge - January 2017
8 fabrics in the background, 8 petals on the flower
Size 15" x 15"
I create in Casa Grande, Arizona

Check out the other challenge entries at Project Quilting