Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who made such encouraging comments about my Blue Marquee/Butterfly Trails quilt from WIP Wednesday. Joyce asked about the flowers and butterflies, and whether they were applique or embroidery or from existing fabrics. Actually, they are cut out from various fabrics I had on hand, so I believe that makes those bits broderie perse (?). Two summers ago when I was in the US, I got a copy of Landscape Quilts by Nancy Zieman and Natalie Sewell. I absolutely fell in love with their quilts and determined to make one. Now, I am not really a floral fabric person, naturally leaning more to textures and batiks, but I bought a ton of floral FQs in preparation for future landscape quilts (despite the fact that what I really wanted to do was some forest scenes).

I used a variation on their landscape technique, basically cutting out the motifs from the fabrics and layering them on the quilt. They say not to use stablizer because in a landscape quilt you use a lot of layers, but I fused the stablizer to the fabric, cut out the motifs and then fused them to the quilt. It is great fun playing with the motifs and figuring where they will go. I then just straight stitched around the motifs in the closest thing I had to matching thread. Simple and fun!