Poppy Breeze

My swap partner, Kylie, received her quilt on Thursday, so I can now reveal what I sent. This is some of what Kylie had to say about what she would like to receive:

I like just about anything. Brights or rich tones - especially reds. Not a fan of cutesy stuff, loving abstract designs at the moment. Not a big fan of lots of embellishments. Finished quilt will be hung.

I designed the entire quilt by myself. I decided to do poppies, because poppies are red, but then ended up doing them in these colours because the fabric was sitting there, calling to me... The grass has bees on it, which I think might me a little bit cute, I hope Kylie doesn't mind.



I pieced the sky using various pieces of blue fabric, radiating from the bottom left corner. I used some fabric from my stash and some I went shopping specifically for. The original idea was to give it a bit of a sunset type look, but I ended up sticking with just blue fabrics to keep it simple. The sky includes fabric with planes, raindrops, umbrellas and spots.



I really enjoyed quilting feathers into the sky, I'd never done feathers before this project and although it is more of a traditional style of quilting, I think it works in this more modern style of quilt. I think it looks a little like clouds.

The poppies were attached using raw edge appliqúe before placing the backing fabric on and I later quilted around them. I like how this gives them a puffy look.



I added the stems after all the quilting was done, which was really tricky and I had to use pliers to pull the thread through all the dense quilt stitches as it was so tight. I could have stitched them before I did the quilting, but I was a little worried about quilting catching on my thread, preferred not to quilt around the stems and didn't really want to quilt over them either. It might have been a little easier to have them show on the back as well, but I wanted to keep the back all white. I stitched the stems on an angle to give the impression of the poppies bobbing in the breeze.