Flower Child

original photo of Morgandy (taken by her Father)

I finally finished this FFFC quilt I've been working on for two weeks. I had the concept before my week at the surface design workshop. I actually made a background for it while I was there. Therefore, it should have gone very quickly. Well almost. There were a few bumps in the road.

Although I had a photo I was planning on using. I wanted it bigger than the printout from the 8.5"x11" size that is my printer capability. To get around this, I thought I would rotate the photo. When I tried this in Picasa, I lost large hunks of the photo. I went into Paint, added some blank edges all around. Then back to Picasa to rotate it. This worked GREAT. Then I was able to trim to size. Therefore I printed the largest possible image of Morgandy on the same size paper.

Morgandy rotated after adding borders all around.

Sorry I could not show the borders added.

Apparently the file type is not compatible to this system.

Original rotated and cropped photo after some added paint.

You will notice the original photo has some hidden body parts. I painted over the photo to add those parts. At my first try, I painted the shoes with a 'shiny black' paint.  It looked more blue than black.  It took 3 coats of paint to cover that up.

This is the background that I made specifically for this quilt.

Satisfied, I tried the cut out against my intended background. Nope! That did not work. I went through my stash and found some flowered fabric I really thought would work. Nope. That was not it either. Then my small group came to the rescue. Peggy suggested I use bites of both, yet turn over the flowered fabric because it was so bright. [I love bright, gaudy and glitz.] That worked much better and became my finished background.  Thanks Peggy.  I couldn't have done it without your input.

Problems quilting were major tension problems. Of course when the machine is giving me tension problems, I also tense up. Finally I just did it. I decided to quilt around each flower petal so that it would really look like a blanket of flowers.

After the binding was on, I hated the binding. I thought the black would frame the quilt and the black jumper would pick it up. No. It was overpowering. Off with the binding. Next I faced it. That was rather quick except for the hours of picking out the batting from the micro stitching I like to use.

'Flower Child', 12" x 17.5"

detail showing dimensional flowers

'Flower Child' detail

In the end I am pleased with it. When the facing was stitched I added the intended dimensional flowers.

It is a Mother's Day gift for Morgandy's Mom. I think she will like it. At least I am happy with the outcome. I'm finishing a bit close to the gift giving deadline, but I did make it.