Sunflowers to sunflowers...

Pretty sunflowers that inspired my sunflower quilt...

Well I just love all of my sunflowers that I plant in my yard each year. Last year I photographed them with the bees and butterflies. 

I decided to make a sunflower quilt and one of my Neuse Quilt Guild members, Frances Salt, had made a lovely one using large sunflower appliques.We displayed hers at our Lenoir County Fair booth a year ago and here it is folded for display but you can still see it...it is on the left with the medium blue background!!


Well, Betty Haynes and I decided to make our own sunflower quilt and started selecting yellow fabrics for the petals. Frances gave us a brown fabric for one of the centers so that we would each have some of the same fabric on all three quilts. Betty and I started appliquing our flowers on about the same time in 2010. I finished my top in 2011. I selected a light blue background fabric and sashed it in a gold daisy fabric.


This photo was my inspiration to use the light blue fabric for the sky...and also because our home is mostly decorated with blue and yellow...

I wanted to applique additional sunflowers on the brown border and used a green batik fabric for the vine and leaves.  I actually hand appliqued all of the sunflowers in the center of the quilt but elected to use a combination of machine and hand applique for the border flowers and vines. The button hole stitch on my machine seemed to make more of a decorative statement and I used it for the centers. I used  a yellow variegated thread for the centers and some green varigated threads for the vines and leaves that I purchased at a quilt show and they were hand dyed from England.

 You can see the butterfly here. It is not paper pieced but is a pattern that a fellow quilter from our "Night Owl" group gave me, Ruth Lee. The Greene County Needlework Guild in Snow Hill, NC used this pattern to make a wall hanging of their logo. The wall hanging is displayed in their classroom. I will have to take a picture of it the next time I visit them. It is lovely.
Here is the back of it...

Here are those lovely hand dyed English threads that I used and the variegated yellow thread.

Here is my diagram that I drafted before I started to decide on placement. I actually added an additional border of brown Thimbleberrries fabric. The final measurements are  79" X 62".
I am deciding now on the batting. I have the daisy fabric for the backing. Of course I want to hand quilt it BUT realistically, I might grid quilt the squares on the machine and hand quilt the rest for it for time sake. 


Visited the Green County Needle Workers today and took a picture of their wall hanging with the butterflies.
It is a great piece of work...

Here is that pretty little butterfly that was my inspiration...It is really not that easy to make and I only made one. They made them to surround the quilt in the border.  A lot of talent!!


I need to mention that the author of this folded fabric process is...
Rebecca Anne Harger. The booklet is "Foldin Oldies" Dimensional Quilting  Prairie Butterfly
1998.