Moon Flowers Quilt

As promised here is another quilt of mine that was revealed at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham this past weekend. It was part of the British Finnish Stash Exchange organized by the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles and the Finnish Patchwork Guild. The idea was that each participating quilter would produce a pack of fabrics from her or his own stash and in exchange receive a similar package from a quilter from the other country.

Above you can see the fabrics I received from a Finnish quilter.

To these we could add fabrics from our own stash (see the ones I used above) and from this combination of fabrics we were to make a quilt 16" wide by 32" long. The theme was up to us. From the submitted quilts each participating Guild selected 30 quilts so that the total show in Birmingham was of 60 quilts in total, 30 from Britain and 30 from Finland. 

I made a background by strip piecing all the fabrics and combining them into long strips sewn together to form the body of the quilt. I machine quilted this background in readiness for whatever I was going to put onto it. 

Finally an idea came as it so often does, when I wasn't looking for it. Instead I was idly doodling on a magazine while chatting. Any paper in front of me is almost guaranteed to be covered in doodles eventually. I seem to be unable to not grab a pen and make marks. The newspapers always end up decorated and when in meetings my notes get embellished too. But this particular evening I suddenly really looked at what I was doing and the thought came into my head that these doodles would make great appliquéd flower motifs.

 

I used one piece of multi-coloured hand dyed fabric to make each individual flower and they were then embellished and added to the quilt as shown. Gold stems seemed appropriate and I also added some hand quilting to the entire piece.  The dark background reminded me of moon light evenings, hence the title of the quilt: Moon Flowers. 

Now that the quilt has been exhibited in Birmingham it will be off on it's travels to Finland and I'm not quite sure when it will return back home. I would love an opportunity to see all 60 quilts together so I'm hoping they will be shown back in this country too.