Sunflowers in the Rust

Well, I can happily report that I have finished the rust piece that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to enter it in an Atlanta show and the deadline was today, so I was working down to the wire.

In doing some practice work (see previous post), I realized that I was going to have to do some thread work on the piece, so I started out by backing it with a very lightweight fusible interfacing.

I used Golden Threads tracing paper to draw the sunflowers…..wasn’t game to try to freehand them with thread.

I then sewed around the paper design.

…..and removed the paper.

I did the same thing with the leaves, and then sewed around the designs 2, 3 or 4 times, depending on how heavy I wanted the lines to be.

As I did the thread work, the fabric started to draw up slightly, making the fabric look wrinkled in the flowers, so I decided to trapunto the flowers and ended up adding extra batting to all of the elements, including the grass at the bottom.

I am happy with the borders on the piece as the first one on the right and bottom used fabrics that I had stamped.

Final step was to baste and quilt the piece. All of the rust colored lines were quilted just following the design of the flowers. Then I had to decide what to do to the background. I started with even lines at the top, but moved into curvy lines in the interior of the piece. The main reason that I did this was because it was easier to do, but, in retrospect, I really like the way it looks.

I decided to face the quilt rather than bind it.

It is always a good feeling to finish a piece…..now on to the next 4 or 5 that are in my mind!!!!