Mod Flower Quilt

 Earth day seems like the perfect day to finish up this quilt and share it with you. Even though it is a small quilt (36"x38") it has been in the works for many months. It all began last September, on National Jelly Roll day. My guild,  McKinney Modern Quilt Guild, was holding a zoom mystery jelly roll sew along day and because I love to "do all the things" I was eager to be a part of it. Mind you, I am not a jelly roll person (not a precut person at all, truth be told) and being on a tight fabric budget I wasn't eager to spend money on a jelly roll. So, I decided to make my own. Due to the generosity of another quilter, I had a large stack of low volume yardage on my shelf. I pulled the needed number of fabrics (20) and cut a 2 1/2" strip from each. 

The day was great fun, with a large number of guild members participating. At the end of the day, I had this finished, and quite boring in my eyes, quilt top. 

Rather than let it go to waste, I decided I wanted to appliqué a large, modern flower to the front. Never mind that hand appliqué was not a skill I had in my current toolbox! I had a vision and was willing to do whatever I needed to do to accomplish it. I set about designing templates for the appliqué I desired, then recruited a friend who is very skilled at needle turn appliqué to teach me. In fact, I also recruited a group of friends to learn alongside me because everything is more fun with friends, right? Martha graciously gave us a free zoom class and I was off and running (with more than a few anxious texts and additional tips and tricks.)

Because I was having fun doing handwork (I usually do), I decided to teach myself big stitch quilting. You Tube to the rescue! I hand stitched the whole quilt using size 8 perle cotton, a neutral variegated in straight rows across and accent stitches on the flower and stem using matching colors.

I even added a few Xs here and there just for fun.

And just for fun, I machine stitched the binding to the back then big stitched it down on the front of the quilt in pink, to match the flower. These stitches don't show on the back of the binding but are firmly stitched through the batting to secure it. Oh, and a few Xs snuck into the binding as well, because, why not?

I'm so happy with this little finish! Very few of my quilts are inspired by nature (weird, I know) and I guess this proves, even when they are, they are modern and not terribly realistic! But it was fun to learn new things.