Sunflower Mini Quilt

My latest quilt is based on a photo that I found. There were no instructions or tutorial that I could find, so I just had to wing it. This is the photo I used for Inspiration Photo credit to Nannette.

My notes.

I drew a simple scale drawing to figure this out.  The nightstand that I wanted the quilt to fit was 16 and 3/4 inches by 11 and a half inches.  My drawing's scale was one half inch to an inch. I laid out the circle of the sunflower based on the photo and also what I thought looked good.  Then I drew the petals free hand.  I did measure the photos in the drawing to get an idea of how large they are. The photo was of course, not the right size.

Next I picked out green fabric for the background, brown for the center and yellow for the petals.  The brown had more white in it than I would prefer, but I think it turned out nicely.  I counted the number of strips of green and yellow petals in my drawing to know how many to cut.  And I cut out several extras so that I could play around with how things looked.

I laid out the green in a pattern that I liked, then sewed the strips together.  First by pairs, then I sewed all the pairs together. Next I laid out the flower, to get a lay out that I liked. 

Once the I had a lay out that I like, I pined it the green background. Then I appliqued it on. To sew curves or turns on the applique, I keep the needle down, raise the foot, turn it, then lower the foot.

Quilt top appliqued together. 

Once the top was done, I made a "quilt sandwich" (layer your quilt all together), pinned it and quilted it all together. This was the first time that I have quilted using anything other than straight line quilting. I used green thread because I wanted it to stand out against the yellow flower petals.  I followed the lines of the green fabric, until I got to the flower petals.  Then I followed the petals.  This was the fun part for me!

Finished Quilt!

I chose a pink, gray and green back ground fabric. I like to use the self binding method, mostly because it doesn't mean messing around with my nemesis, bias tape.

I used the quilt to cover the top of nightstand in my room.