Flowers for Mum

I promised a while ago to post some pictures of my other winning quilt, this one was made for the Margaret Every Challenge two years ago. The main challenge fabric was the butterfly fabric used in the border, I also cut some of the butterflies out and appliquéd them around the flowers. We also had a small piece of the ribbon fabric, which I used as cornerstones in the first teal border. This range of fabric was sold in aid of Ovarian Cancer Research, by Blank Textiles and the quilt is called Flowers for Mum because it was made in memory of my mum, who died from ovarian cancer in April 2004. The teal colour wasn't easy to match, but in the end I went with a bright fuchsia pink, (don't forget you can enlarge any photo by clicking on it).

The flowers were foundation paper pieced, the rest was rotary cut and pieced. I did use a commercial pattern, but enlarged it, which involved a lot of Hard Sums - it was quite a challenge to get the pieced border to fit! The wadding is Quilters Dream Cotton Select (mid loft), which gives a nice soft drape, but does hold the creases if the quilt's left folded up for any period of time. The quilting is done in a silver metallic thread as all the fabrics have silver highlights. The back is simply pieced, I had a metre piece of the ribbon fabric left, which I framed with plain white to make it big enough. I even managed to centre and square it pretty accurately.






I also entered this quilt at the Festival of Quilts last year, it was up against much stiffer competition this time, so no prizes there, but I enjoyed seeing it hanging in a major show (not a very good photo I'm afraid, I should have used the flash).