Friday 23 May 2014

BQF - Original Design

Pretty much all of my quilts could go in this category, but I've chosen to enter Nature's Gift:


Like my other entry, this quilt was a commissioned piece. It's close to 84in square; plenty big enough for a queen bed.


The silhouette trees took forever to  mark and cut, but they make the quilt.



I was given plenty of inspiration to work from, and from that narrowed the brief to Australian outback - but nothing too cliche. Hidden in the sky and on the ground are a selection of lesser known Australian native creatures; mostly birds plus a frog, platypus and eastern water dragon.


So we have the gorgeous outback ochres, with some green for contrast, and a small billabong, all beneath the massive blue sky.  The sky is pieced shoo-fly blocks, and the bottom is free-pieced curves.


I deliberately positioned some of the stars in the southern cross on lighter blue fabrics, so as not to make it too overt.


I put the platypus (above) by the water, and nearby there's a nod to bushfires (below).


I chose these echoed Cs for the ground quilting, filling horizontal segments separated by triple rows of wavy lines - it looks just as good from the back:


This water dragon was great fun to quilt, as a special request:


Thank you for visiting. The rest of the quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival original design category can be found here; please take the time to have a look, and nominate and vote for your favourites in all the categories.

10 comments:

Charlotte said...

the trees are so intricate! Amazing work!

WendyLou said...

Wow!! This is amazing!!

Tomomi McElwee said...

Love it!!

Yvonne Campbell said...

This is very pretty and the attention to detail is amazing! The quilted bird is awesome!

Lonci said...

I like this very much, congratulations:))

DeborahGun said...

wow - this is so amazing :-)

Annmarie said...

Your quilt is gorgeous! sew creative. You get my vote!

Karen @ Pieces of Contentment said...

This is brilliant in every way Emma. I'm sure the recipients were thrilled with your work. Did you raw edge machine appliqué the tree silhouettes?

Vivian said...

Wow, between the design, the fabric choices, the applique, the quilting and since it was a commission I'm sure it was also on a deadline --- whew, I'm blown away! Wonderful work!

PaintedThread said...

I missed when you originally posted this - it's amazing work. So beautiful!