Applique Background

I have been thinking about the background for my floral appliqué and finally decided to try painting one.

After covering my husband’s work bench…..

…. I had a look at my green paints…..

…and decided to start with a Moss Green….

I added a fair amount of water to the lumpy paint and started brushing it onto the fabric with a foam brush…

You can see the spot that I started in because it is WAY too dark, but I will deliberately cover it up with a clump of flowers!!

After covering the bottom of the background, I added a darker green to the leftover Moss green, and added more brushstrokes….

I truly like the “streaks” of color!!

After cleaning the plastic, I turned the fabric around and started thinking about the sky portion. I started out with a blue, added water, then some white paint, and more white paint, until I found a color I was happy with…

For the sky, I didn’t want to paint streaks, so I decided to use a sea sponge instead…

At this point, I am liking the mottled sky!!

I decided to deepen the blue a bit, but unfortunately didn’t incorporate the paint well, so I ended up with dark blue dots…

You can see them a bit in this photo.

I then decided to go with solid white and create some “clouds” to hide some of the dots. After I held it up…..

… I realized it needed darker areas at the bottom, so I added some brown to the small amount of Moss Green left over and added additional brush strokes.

This was how it looked the next morning after it had dried, toning the colors down a bit….

To finish it off, I ironed it well, then washed it, hoping to restore the fabric’s soft hand..

It is still a little stiffer than regular fabric, and I will have to see if I can sew easily thru it.

I’ll let you know!!

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Next steps in applique prep

When I left you last Saturday, I had planned the bones of my new hand-applique quilt….

I printed out a photo and played a bit with colors…..

….getting more and more excited about this project!

Since the design was pinned to my design wall, I decided that I needed to draw a map to guide me over the months of sewing. I covered the design with a thin paper…..

…and ROUGHLY traced around each flower….

I then added some stems and ideas about where leaves might go….

Hopefully, that is enough planning, and I can now move on to doing some of the work.

My first step is to prepare the background. I am thinking about painting it. Wish me luck!!

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Planting my Garden

Yesterday, I told you about a new…. SLOW…. project!

On New Year’s Day, I spent the entire day planting the blooms, so to speak!

I had put this process off, mostly because I knew I would need my printer/photocopier to make different sizes of patterns. And that printer was downstairs. Frankly, I was being lazy because I didn’t want to have to go up and down the stairs!

Then I had the idea of carrying the printer upstairs to my studio…

Well, that was an easy solution. Maybe it bodes well for the rest of the project!

I started by taping out an area on my design wall … approximately 40 x 40.

I spread out all of my patterns….

….and picked a few to start with….

I found that I needed to add the stems to get a better idea of how it would look.

The central blue tape line indicates where the background will turn from green to blue. The bottom line is extra, put there before I decided on a size!

I kept adding flowers by photocopying each pattern as many times as needed, and in whatever size I wanted, and pinning them to the board….

It was such a fun and relaxing process, and at this point, I declared it finished…

My question for you is…..

“AM I CRAZY?”

Come back in the next weeks as I SLOWLY work thru this project…..

I can’t wait!!

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A Project to Abide In….

On Thursday, I talked about wanting to slow down and “abide” in my life in 2026.

As part of that idea, I am starting a BIG…….SLOW……PROJECT!!

In December, I talked about making this cute Snowman applique quilt…

…and how much I enjoyed using the Apliquick System.

WELL, for many years, I have thought about making an appliqued garden, a cacophony of colors and blooms.

In 2023, I did something similar using machine applique….

“Botero Flower Field”

…but I have always wanted to one by hand.

I started the planning process by searching for fanciful flowers and downloaded a TON of ideas…..

I then put my favorites into a PowerPoint project so that I could manipulate the sizes.

I printed out my favorites and roughly cut them out…..

These are my “seeds” for the garden!

Come back tomorrow and I will show you how I “planted” my garden!

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One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.

You can find out more at this link…..