This month, Island Batik (under parent company Lumin Fabrics) and Aurifil have teamed up to ask ambassadors to create a project using crazy quilt techniques. I didn't want to do traditional crazy quilted blocks, so I thought about applique instead. I decided to "dig up" an idea I considered for last year's thread painting challenge but didn't use. I was given the Sunset collection designed by Deb Tucker's 180 Design.
I started by pulling fabrics into general color families. I had pink, orange, yellow, and blurple (blueish purple.) I did the petals first, which I decided would be pink and orange. One color family at a time, I cut strips of each fabric to use for my crazy quilted fabric.
I randomly sewed 2 together, then pressed with my Oliso mini iron, then went over the seam with a "fancy stitch." Fancy Stitches is what my son, age 11, calls the decorative stitches on my machine. He loves the fancy stitches and for much of the crazy quilting, he would choose my decorative stitches.
Several years ago, I realized that I used the decorative stitches infrequently enough that I would forget which ones I liked when stitched out. So I made myself a stitch reference! You can see how I did that here; it's been a really handy reference to have. Fire Monkey would sit on my bed with the stitch reference binder and call out the number of the stitch he wanted me to use next.
We were given the chance to choose 4 colors of Aurifil thread for this challenge. I also pulled a lot of other colors from the Aurifil spools I already had. I used both 50 weight and 40 weight threads, choosing based on color and not on weight. Here is a list of the thread colors I used:
50 Weight:
1104 Neon Orange
1148 Light Jade
2115 Lemon Yellow
2530 Blossom Pink
2810 Turquoise
2884 Green Yellow
4250 Flamingo (Variegated)
5003 Wine
red-ish color with a number sticker that is long gone
40 Weight:
2520 Violet
2545 Medium Purple
4020 Fuchsia
4648 Desert Dawn
5006 Light Turquoise
Once I had large enough pieces, I cut out the petal shapes. I wanted pretty big petals, so my 4" Accquilt orange peel die was not going to be good enough, though I did end up using that die for the leaves. I looked online for a printable orange peel template as large as I could find. Caroline of Sew Can She has a free printable template for 3 three sizes of orange peel. I used the largest size. I printed the template onto printable freezer paper, which can be ironed onto fabric, traced, then peeled off and used again.
My original source of inspiration was Rob Appell's Strata Flower. For his petals made from strip sets, he sewed the petal shape to fusible interfacing, so that it is not raw-edge applique. I did that, too, using Shapeflex 101.
For the center of the flower, I planned to use another Accuquilt die. The largest circle I have is 5". I made one, but it wasn't big enough for my vision. I have Creative Grids' set of circle rulers that I use making By Annie bag patterns; the largest one is 6 1/2" in diameter. That looked much better against the big petals.
I decided to quilt my background before adding the flower shapes, so I layered the lovely Scuba from Island Batik's always-available Basics collection with Hobbs Thermore batting and a backing pieced from 4 fabrics in the collection. I quilted a cross-hatch design using Aurifil 5006 Light Turquoise (40 wt).
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Then I laid out the petals on the now-quilted background. Once I was happy with the layout, I fused the petals down. I picked out a variegated thread specifically for the outside of the petals. Desert Dawn really captures the colors in Sunset.
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There are 22 fabrics in the Sunset collection; I used all but one in this project. Island Batik always sends a variety of coordinating fabrics from the Foundations lines for the blog hop collections, and this time I used more of the coordinating fabrics than I ever had before! Specifically, the Basic Lotus is the stem, and I've added solid red, solid orange, and 2 blenders that I don't have the names for to the petals.
I'm calling it Crazy Petals. It measures 30" x 44".
My friend Connie of Kauffman Designs also made a crazy quilt with the Sunset collection. Be sure to hop over and check out her quilt!
