"Fractured Sunflower"

As promised in Foto Friday, here is the art quilt I made from my sunflower photo. It had two flowers in the photo, in orange yellow, I upped the saturation in Photoshop to make a brighter print. Putting treated fabric through the computer printer, with freezer paper on the back, created an 8" x 10" print. I cut it up into 3 pieces and rearranged & rotated the sections. I dug through my box of hand dyed fabric, afraid I wouldn't have any orange, but I did have several pieces. I use a lot of yellow, but not much orange. I also used a piece of dyed green with some leaf printing in acrylic paints. Cutting up rectangles of dyed fabric, and arranging them with the photo sections, made a larger lay out. Pieces of green filled in the edges.

I drew quilting lines on the hand dyed sections, to extend the flower petals in to that area. I began extensive free motion machine quilting. Thread painting the petals with 4 shades of rayon thread, yellow, orange, rust and red gave them detail, texture and shine. The centers were done with a very small stipple stitch in brown with gold highlights. The background was stippled in green and gold to finish off the quilting, and bound in Bali batik in a cinnamon color. All done in less than a week, a quick easy project for me. It is about 14" x 13" a small Autumn wall hanging.

Foto Friday 2 - Sunflowers

Here are some bright and cheerful sunflowers to inspire you. They give me a very Autumn feel as the squirrels run around collecting seeds and nuts. I told my sister once that "you can't take a bad picture of a sunflower." I proved that when I went through the 143 photos of sunflowers I have in my file. Trying to pick just several for posting was difficult.

My sister and her neighbor have a contest every summer to see who can grow the tallest and biggest sunflower. I am amazed how big they can get, they save seed from their best ones and trade with other friends. Sharing at it's best. One year the squirrels got to it, and planted seeds everywhere in her yard. She had sunflowers all over, even in her lawn. I have made several sunflower art quilt wall hangings, one a photograph, that I added 3-D petals to, and machine quilted and beaded the center. As I finished the stressful deadline for the Leonardo quilt, I wanted something quick and easy to just play with, so I printed a sunflower photo, divided it into 3 parts, rotated, rearranged and added some hand dyed fabric, then machine thread painted it. It is coming out very colorful, and fun. I'll post it when I am finished.

So please, enjoy this bouquet of sunflowers I have picked for you! - AMY