This quilt was inspired by a quilt I saw in a magazine that had lots of dresden plates all over it, seemingly placed at random but I'm sure an awful lot of thought went into it.
The young lady this is for already had a very colourful bedroom before her arrival so it was only fitting that the quilt was full of colour. I wanted to turn my plates into colourful flowers.
I used the magazine template to make the flowers / plates and cut one from sturdy card to be used over again.
I thought I would have 6 flowers and there are 20 petals on each flower so I needed 120 petals cut from brightly coloured fabrics. I got all of the fabric from spotlight and asked for 20cm cuts (which was still too much). I've got lots of leftovers. And I had some charm squares which were perfect.
The purple piece on the left above is how the petals look when they are cut and then they are folded lengthways, right sides together and a quarter inch seam is sewn along the top edge - I chain-pieced mine for speed.
Then turn the seam inside out to form a point and press as above. Try to keep the seam centred so that your petals are even. The one above is bit off centre... oops. Do this for 20 petals. You can then lay them out in the order you want to sew them.
Sew two petals together, right sides together, usual quarter sea allowance. It's more important that they meet at the top - don't worry if they are uneven at the bottom as this will be hidden later.
Keep adding petals one by one, or you can chain piece them in pairs, then fours - whatever is easiest for you.
You will end up with a complete circle that should look a bit like the one above.
For the centre piece, cut around a circle template about a half inch bigger than your template.
Use a rough tacking stitch around the template...
...and pull on the thread so that it gathers around your circle template. Iron this in position then remove the card template and iron again. You should have a nice round circle of fabric with turned edges like the one below, ready to appliqué on to your flower.
I usually appliqué using a zig-zag stitch but I think I'm about to start experimenting with something a bit more secure. Repeat for all of your flowers.
I know I should have taken more photos of the various stages but I was running out of time on this one. The pic below is the finished quilt top.
To make my blocks I used 10 and half inch squares of white so that they would be 10 inches after seaming. The elephants came from another quilt I had been working on. They were made by using double-sided fusible webbing, ironed to the white block and appliquéd with a zig-zag stitch. The blocks with green petals on the side and bottom were half-width and the leaves/grass pieces were made in the same way as the flower petals and then turned under and sewn at the raw edges.
Each flower was appliquéd to a white block and I left gaps in the appliqué stitches to tuck in the rik-rak stems. Then the stems were sewn down with as straight a stitch as I could manage (slowly does it).
I then finished the top with a 5 inch border.
The finished quilt - front above and the back below. Love the back of this quilt. I stitched in the ditch around the blocks and used big stippling on the border. I wasn't sure about leaving such big gaps in the quilting but the wadding pack said I could leave up to ten inches unquilted...
I wish I had hand-finished the binding on this quilt - the machine binding is a big mess when you don't get it exactly right. Luckily the baby probably won't mind and I've asked her mother not to look too closely at my shonky stitches.
What to do next... I know it's only August but I've ordered some Christmas charm packs. Bad girl!!
