Working on a New Quilt

A couple of weeks ago I started working on a new quilt.  Pieced this time, which I haven’t done much of in the past few months.  But, of course, me being me, I couldn’t just decide to piece squares or triangles.  Nope, not me.  I had to design this really complicated quilt with all kinds of curves and small pieces.

It’s a tulip quilt, designed around a photograph I found.  I isolated three of the many tulips on the photo, enlarged them a bit to make it easier to design, and traced them onto mylar to get the first pass at the design.  Once I was happy with it, I photocopied it onto paper, designed the background, and enlarged it as much as I could onto an 11” x 17” piece of paper.

Then I trimmed the paper to size, folded it in 4’s, scanned each quarter design, and printed it on a plotter as large as it would go.  I ended up with my original design enlarged to approximately 80” x 80”.  Quite happy with the size, although some of the pieces are still small.

Next came the shopping.  I decided I wanted red tulips, and I don’t have that many red fabrics, so I went from store to store gathering different reds, and some pinks for the lights.  I realized that it is difficult to work with reds, as you have red, and then you have either burgundy or pink.  But … after many trips to the stores around town, I gathered enough to begin.

The photo below shows some of the reds I used for the first flower I pieced.

 After a few days and many fabric trials, I started work on the first tulip.  This is the first petal I worked on.

The next photo shows the first and second petals.

 When I finished the first tulip, and started on the second one, I changed the fabrics I used.  Once the second flower was half done, the first one I made didn’t look good anymore, colorwise.  I decided I had spent too much time on it to just discard it, so I designed another quilt around the flower and plan on turning it into a workshop.

This is the complete first tulip:

The photo below shows the flower and the leaf.  I will work on the background next.  I can’t wait to see what it looks like once it’s all put together.

I will post more photos soon.  Keep reading.  In the meantime, I hope you keep quilting.

Ana