Alice's Garden Quilt--A Collage of Kaffe's Flowers

When I was straightening up the Elfa drawers that hold my stash, I went through my “purple” drawer.  Tucked into the bottom of it was a piece of sun-printed fabric that didn’t look familiar to me. When did I make this?  Then I remembered that I’d demonstrated sun printing at our MM retreat in Arkansas several years ago.  I went to the blog to look at the pictures I’d posted for that wonderful retreat.  Lo and behold, there I saw a photo of myself working on this exact fabric!  (I've included that photo below.)

I had decided to do a sort of collage of flower cutouts from my Kaffe Fassett fabrics, so next I sorted through that drawer.  Most of his florals are huge, really too big for such a small quilt.  But I found a few that would work.

I cut small sections of my chosen fabrics and applied a fusible product to their backs.  Then I cut around the flower motifs and arranged each on a square of the sun-printed fabric.  I used a fusible product that I have only occasionally used--Steam a Seam--but this proved to be a good choice.  Because it is “repositionable,” you can easily rearrange the appliqué shapes; they stick to the background but aren’t permanently adhered until you iron them down.  I arranged the appliqués such that some of the sun-printed flowers can be seen.

I bound it with more of the sun-printed fabric, and I quilted very simply with echo-quilting around the motifs.

This is the second Garden quilt I made!  My first one was a stringed pieced design, again using florals that were chiefly shades of purple, and it turned out all right, but somehow I wasn’t happy with it.  But it was already made, and so now it has become the back of my quilt.  So as I’ve done before on occasion, mine is a two-sided quilt! Below is the back of my quilt.  If I'd used this one, I'd have named it "String Pieced Garden Flowers."  

And here I am working on that sun-printed fabric: