he loves me – a finished challenge quilt

In true typical me fashion, I managed to finish my quilt for the Michael Miller Petal Pinwheels Challenge hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild just in time. Just.

The idea for this quilt came to me while up with my youngest in the middle of the night. It’s one of those flash ideas I seem to get, and I have to write it down or I forget it. I love these kinds of inspiration moments. Even if it means being up at three and four AM.

I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard of the game girls play while pulling petals off a daisy or flower. He loves me, he loves me not…. he loves me (if you’re lucky). The fabrics for the challenge reminded me of this game. And I really wanted to create the feel of petals falling. If you counted there are exactly twenty-one petals (some species of daisies have this number), and “he loves me” was born.

The background is nice solid gray from Kona. I’ve included a few petals of other solid varieties and have used a shot cotton for the grass and stem. The only pieced item in this whole quilt is the stem and background. Everything else was “appliqued”. I use this phrase lightly because I’m not sure what I did can really be called applique, so much as flying by the seat of my pants and hoping it turns out ok.

I did buy some thermoweb with the intention of doing real applique, but in the end, I decided I really didn’t want a “polished” look to the finish. I wanted it raw and thready and organic. Needle-turned would be too perfect, and interfacing would be too chunky. So, after hand cutting the petals, I used a fabric glue stick, positioned them, tacked them down, and sewed over top with my quilting stitch once everything was all layered together. The matchstick quilting served as my applique process. Even the grass was glued down. I’m not sure if this is lazy or creative, but it fit my end goal and the quilt isn’t too thick or stiff. I am really pleased with how it turned out.

I used several Aurifil threads to do the quilting, both light and dark gray, some black and white and a gorgeous variegated yellow. Before binding, I added a bit of hand embroidery (for those taking notes, hand-stitching over top of matchstick quilting is somewhat tricky but doable).

I love this effect.

A little creative binding, and we’re done. It measeures 20.25″ x 14.5″.
I’m so happy with the way this turned out.

Thank you for stopping by today!

Linking up for finish it up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Jade