Here we are, the end of April, and I'm going to show you finish number 8 for 2026! So far I'm keeping up with my goal of averaging two quilt finishes per month.
This quilt top has been hanging in the quilt closet for quite a while. It wasn't hanging there because I didn't like it, quite the opposite. This quilt is one I designed, and I like it a lot, so I wanted to make sure this went to a special person. I finally decided on a recipient, so it was time for it to move to to the front of the quilting queue.
The sunflower fabric was actually what was left from some table runners I made for a wedding several years ago. To cut the table runners to the size we needed, I ended up with about a nine inch long narrow strip down the length of the several yards of fabric leftover. I cut the very long narrow strip into 8.5" squares, then played around in EQ to find an alternate block I liked. The edges were a bit tricky, because using full blocks to the edge left the design feeling unfinished. I opted to make modified half blocks along the edges to fix that issue to my satisfaction.
Choosing a thread color was tricky. The border and some of the fabrics are dark, but the cream background is very light. I auditioned a cream, several yellows, and a light green that had a hint of blue. The cream and yellows showed up way too much on the dark colors, and the teal was stark on the cream. The light green worked best for what I wanted on this quilt. Sometimes I purposely go for a lot of contrast, but that wasn't what I wanted on this quilt.
I really wanted to quilt sunflowers on this quilt, and I've never quilted sunflowers before, but that's never stopped me before. I used a 90" wide minky for the backing, so I knew the quilting. was really going to show on the back. It's not perfect, I kept changing how I travelled to put a new sunflower where I wanted it. By the time I was finished the quilting, I had settled on which method I preferred to travel with this design, but if the recipient looks closely, they'll see variances in different sections of the quilt.
My sunflowers got pretty stylized trying to fill the space, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how the quilting came out! Sometimes I stop and think that if my past self that was just learning to FMQ, could see what I can do now, she'd be pretty happy that my quilting journey has progressed as well as it has. I'm not great at drawing, I've only ever been a doodler, but FMQ skills do build on each other, and by turning the rounded daisy design I've quilted several times into more flame shaped leaves (I've quilted flames several times as well), I think it made for a decent sunflower design. Could someone else have done better? Absolutely, but others may not have done as well. I don't think I'll ever feel like I am advanced as far as FMQ goes, but I'm not really a beginner either. What I am is perfectly capable of quilting my own quilts, and that was my goal all along.
Just an FYI, the fabrics in the quilt and the backing minky are teal, a teal that is more green than blue. The photos make it look more blue than it reads in person. The sunflower fabrics have green and blue in the background, it's really a pretty even mix.
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