Finished! Sunflower Field Mini Quilt

Hello Everybody!

I actually finished a quilt! Only a miniature quilt. But it's finished, nonetheless. This is Sunflower Field.

This is my entry into the Near To Nature mini quilt challenge organised by The Little House of Patchwork  in aid of the RSPB. For the challenge we were all sent a pin badge of a British bird or countryside animal, and we had to make a mini quilt inspired by and including the pin. I was sent this little greenfinch.

A bit of Googling and image searching revealed greenfinches to be fond of eating sunflower seeds.

I had also seen som lovely EPP sunflowers by Anne at Three Goobers. I did some sketches and decided to do a little field with sunflowers in three different sizes to create an illusion of depth. The maximum size for the challenge was 9x12 inches, so it was clear from the outset I was going to need some very small sunflowers indeed.

I started with the largest size, based on a 0.75 inch hexie centre. I created templates for the petals by chopping hexie papers into thirds.

These worked well so I tried the next size down - 0.5 inch hexie centres.

Again, so far so good. Finally came the smallest ones. 0.25 inch hexie centres.

As you can see, I managed it, but these were fiddly. Even cutting the petal papers was awkward and I haven't managed anything close to the same accuracy as with the larger ones. It was difficult to know how big a seam allowance to leave. My attempts were pretty irregular and I have come to the conclusion that bigger is always better when it comes to seam allowances. It is totally ok on tiny pieces like this to have a seam allowance bigger than the actual paper piece you are working with. Where it was too small, there were loose threads sticking out the edge and it would have been hard to piece anything on to them.

As it was, I wasn't piecing, I was appliqueing, so I was able to hide a lot of the loose threads while needle turning. You can see how much neater the applique makes the shape in these photos, taken before and after stitching down the smallest flowers. Sorry for the terrible lighting.

I used a fusible adhesive to attach the pieces before sewing, and while that made it a little stiff to work with, it was definitely a better plan than pinning, especially for the smaller flowers.

Once they were down, I added the sky and a couple of embroidered details.

Then finally the quilting. All done by hand This doesn't show as nicely as I had hoped, partly because there was a lots of thickness in the appliqued portions (those large seam allowances have their drawbacks). But you can see it pretty well on the back.

I colour matched the threads, but I am now thinking the quilting on the petals would have looked better with a slightly different yellow.

And here it is complete! With the little greenfinch on a sunflower about to enjoy his favourite meal. Here's a couple of detail pics for you as well.

I just managed to meet the challenge deadline (Friday 16th August). I am not expecting any wins, partly because I have seen the quality of my competition on IG, but I have really enjoyed making this. There was such a good response to the challenge that I am hoping they will exhibit them all somewhere and I can go see them in person.

Focussing on this has taken some of my time away from my other ongoing projects, especially the fussy cutting sewalong, but hopefully now that it's done I can get on with that a bit more. It does feel good to get a WIP ticked off my list.

Thanks for reading!