June "Sunflowers" Blog Hop

It is REVEAL TIME again and boy did that month go by FAST!! 😲 This month’s themed art challenge over at Art Elements was "Sunflowers" hosted by Susan Kennedy. I always associate sunflowers with gorgeous photos and paintings of the Tuscan countryside for some reason, so my design for this theme was inspired by images of Tuscan sunflower fields against a blue sky. These types of photos contributed to the colors, composition and the feel of my new piece this month.

Left- Sienna, Italy         Right- Tuscany, Italy

**DISCLAIMER: Since sewing and quilting are NOT my area of expertise, I apologize in advance to those who quilt and sew, for any improper use of terminology and/or technique descriptions in this blog 😂**

As soon as I saw the theme I knew I wanted to use a very new to me hand sewn quilting technique called English Paper Piecing. My by-love-rather-than-by-blood third mom, Annette, taught me about this method just last year! It’s use of geometric shapes seemed perfect for the sunflower petals and would allow a novice quilter like myself to make clean lines and joins without making my brain explode measuring and cutting all of the little fabric pieces. This was an ambitious undertaking to say the least, since I have yet to complete anything using this method and would now try to make an entire mini quilt, with beaded embellishments, in less than 30 days.
YUP! I’m that crazy.

Paper templates can be bought pre-cut or you can print templates on card stock like this, you just have to be VERY precise when cutting the paper out so everything fits together in the end. Here are some of the tools of the trade and some fabric ready to be basted!!!

Basically for English Paper Piecing (EPP) you are using paper templates of the shapes you want, basting the fabric to the paper and then joining the basted shapes together to form your quilt top without doing all the measuring of little scraps and then potentially joining said scraps in an utterly wonky fashion.

I started joining at the center and worked my way out. The white basting thread and paper templates will be removed after all is joined and pressed VERY WELL to maintain the clean seams!!

I prefer to hand sew over machine as MUCH as possible (in all areas of sewing) so this is a PERFECT quilting method for me! Once you are all joined up, you press the entire piece again to keep your seams intact and then remove the basting thread and pop the paper templates out, leaving you a perfectly joined quilt top!! So easy it’s almost like cheating 😁

I don't visualize well, so I did a "blueprint" drawing to scale at about 21" x 24" so I would know how many and of what, to cut. The blue "sky" fabric I purchased in 2.5" strips to save time so that I could focus on the flower rather than a full patchwork background. I selected this Batik fabric for the backing and to wrap to the front as binding because it pulls all the colors together and it's pretty!!!

LEFT: First round of petals joined to center   RIGHT: 2nd round of petals joined to center

Then you sandwich the quilt top, the organic cotton batting sheet and the backing fabric together and pin the crap out of it!! By far the most tedious and hateful part of quilting in my opinion. 😒😆

LEFT: Blue stripes have been joined, the cotton organic batting is sandwiched in the middle and the Batik backing is underneath with fabric left to fold to the front, binding the finished piece.     CENTER: Flower layer, blue background layer, cotton batting and Batik backing sandwich.  RIGHT: The fully pinned layers ready for hand quilting!!!

You can quilt the layers together in the stitch pattern of your choosing, working from the middle out in case any of the layers shift as you go. We don’t want to have a big pooch of material anywhere in your finished piece.

I quilted the sunflower portion by just sewing each hexagon, gem or diamond an ⅛” inside the seam, following the shape of each piece. I didn’t want to quilt a chaotic design over top of the flower itself, since the fabrics I used are already busy and I hoped to add some beading at the end if time allowed.

I did chose to use a patterned vine template for the rest of the quilt however and using a fine tip water soluble marking pen, transferred the template onto the blue background so that I could stitch through all three layers and quilt the project together!

My stitches are definitely NOT consistent and are a bit too large but since it’s my first effort, I decided they look organic and artsy rather than messy or incompetent (just play along here as necessary! LOL)

Once all of the quilting was completed, I then folded over my backing fabric to create the quilt binding that gives it the finished edge AND brings my batik fabric to the front creating a border.

Here it is fully quilted and ready for beading and stitching embellishment! I am SO in love with the look and feel of this quilted fabric that I want a full size functional handmade quilt even more than I did already!! I wish THIS one was a full quilt but I never could have done THAT in a month. hehheh

I decided to add beading and stitching to create texture since this would be on a wall rather than a functional blanket. 

I chose shiny bugle beads for the leaves and will add stitched veins to them later.

The Tiger Eye chips sewn onto the sunflower center remind me of sun seeds with the irregular shapes and points. Not to mention, I'm just a sucker for gemstones.

I added brown shiny seed beads to create delineation between the head of the flower and the first round of petals. There are round Jasper beads on the hexies and golden yellow beads on all the petal tips to balance the flower body with the beaded center.

Golden yellow outline stitching gave subtle definition to the outside edge of the whole sunflower. Blue scatter beads on the background help to balance the bead work on the flower itself and my label on the back finishes the piece!!

This quilted wall hanging was a JOY to create and took me right down to the wire with the one month deadline. It definitely pushed my “sleep is for the weak” mantra due to me still needing to crochet several orders while only wanting to work on this!! LOL 😁

This across the surface photo helps to show the dimensions and textures.

"Summer Sunflower"

For those of you that made it through my long story LONG blog entry, I hope you have enjoyed the process as much as I have. I can’t wait to be able to continue making the English Paper Piecing hexagon quilt that I originally started last year when first shown this method!!

I have learned from this challenge just how COOL it’s going to be when it’s finally done someday. 😍😀

Love and Light,

💖 Raven

SEE THE ART CREATED BY OTHER PARTICIPANTS FOR THE JUNE "SUNFLOWER" CHALLENGE BY VISITING THEIR BLOGS!!! 

Guests

Alysen

Anita

Cat

Divya

Jill

Kathy

Linda

Linda

Mischelle

Norma

Raven (you are here now, in case you are loosing track ;)

Sarajo

Tammy

AE Team

Caroline

Cathy

Claire

Jenny

Laney

Lesley

Sue