Machine quilting my orange poppy wall hanging

52 Week UFO Challenge #34 - Poppy wall hanging

Back in 2006 - yes TEN YEARS AGO - my mom and I attended Quilt Canada in Ottawa and took a course on creating pictorial flower quilts from a photo. I wish I could remember the name of the technique we used or who taught the class, but the handouts we received are long gone (or lost somewhere in the depths of my sewing room).

My flower applique was finished shortly after we came home from the conference, but I never knew how I wanted to border and quilt it, so I tucked it away and was surprised when I found it back in December!

I have quite a collection of batik fabrics - all housed in this shoe organizer. I LOVE batiks, and always seem to be adding to my stash. I figured that was a good place to start when looking for border fabrics for my poppy.

I picked out a few to audition...

And ended up picking a black batik for the inner border and two different orange prints for the outside border.

Once I got it loaded it on my Gammill, I had fun doing lots of machine quilting on the flower and  background.

Here is a view of the back of the wallhanging showing some of the machine quilting.

Here is the finished project. I really love how it turned out and really can't believe that it took me ten years to finish it. Good thing I started my 52 week UFO challenge!! Project #34 is done!!

Using Tsukineko inks to fabric paint daisies

52 Week UFO Challenge - Project #32

A couple years ago Nellie and I took a surface design course with Elaine Quehl and one of the supplies we learned to use was Tsukineko Inks. These inks are so amazing to work with and one of the coolest things about them is how you can dilute them with aloe vera gel to make different shades of the same colour.

I used these inks to paint these daisies on white cotton fabric soon after taking Elaine's class, but then it ended up in my UFO pile.

I decided to make a wall hanging out of it and set to work picking borders.

Border option 1

Border option 2

Border option 3

I settled on this fabric combination of a purple batik outer border and a fuchsia inner border.

Once the borders were on, I mounted it on my Gammill and got to work quilting it.

A matching fuchsia binding and a hanging sleeve on the back finished the wall hanging off quite nicely!! Now that I've finished this piece off, I can't wait to do some more fabric painting with my Tsukineko Inks!!

Project #32 in my 52 week UFO Challenge is complete! What will I finish off next???