Coneflower Confection - Project Quilting

"Coneflower Confection," 16.5" x 17.5", made for Project Quilting
Season 4, Challenge 3: Annie's Vision, Feb. 2013

Quick recap of the challenge: "Annie's Vision"

1. Your inspiration is the art of Annie Young. Explore the colors, the textures, the style, the subject matter, the feeling. Choose what speaks most to you and use it to make your quilt.

The first thing I noticed when I looked at Annie's art was that her painted backgrounds looked similar to some of the hand dyed and hand painted fabric that I had. So I started this challenge by looking through my fabrics to find one that made me think of her backgrounds.

Something else I recognized was that she frequently uses flowers as her subject matter. I decided to make a cone flower because it tied in with the pinkish purple spot in the upper left corner of my background fabric. I fused the flower pieces to the background then made the quilt sandwich with wool batting so the stitches that hold down the fused fabric are also the quilting stitches.

One of my favorite aspects about Annie's work is how much energy and movement it has. She often goes around her subject matter with many strokes. I immediately thought of mimicking that look but using couched thread instead of paint.

For the petals of the cone flower, I cut the hand-painted pink fabric a little larger than I wanted then trimmed it down saving the "outline" which I fused on top of the petals. I stitched them down then couched some thread over the petals echoing the petal shapes. I also couched this yarn in the pinkish purple area in the upper left corner.

Annie's painting "Confetti Susan" has painted confetti on it, which reminded me of seed stitching, so I did some blue seed stitching in the background of the quilt, which also added some texture to this area. Another piece titled "Rug Eyes" looks like it has buttons for the center of the flowers so I added one for the center of my cone flower.

The quilt is finished with a strip-facing binding.

More about Coneflower Confection

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Click on any of the photos to see larger images.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Annie's Vision page.