Flora & Fauna

"Fauna is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is Flora." - so Wikipedia tells me.
This is a quilt I have been thinking about making for quite some time - not so much the flora & fauna aspect of it but the big colorful initial in the center and then detailed flowing quilting all around on the white fabric. 

A little girl named Flora just turned 5 so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to create this quilt and go wild with feathers and flower-ish shapes. 

The letter F is made from sewing scraps from my scrap bins into strips. I ironed the strips to a light iron-on fusible & cut the letter 'f' out. Then ironed it to the middle of the fabric securing with a small zigzag stitch.

I played with swirls, pebbles, feathers and petals.  The quilting was 100% improvised as I went with no marking.

Feather trees bloom on this quilt. 

In fact all sorts of wonderful flowery plants bloom on this quilt.

I didn't forget the odd vegetable - peas in the pod are really easy and fun to quilt.

I realize now that I forgot to photograph the strawberry patch that lives in this quilt. Can you spot it? There are a few strawberries peeking in on the top left hand corner of the photo below.  

There are also some fauna for little Flora to hunt out. In amongst the feathers and flowers live a caterpillar, a snail, a butterfly, a dragonfly, a lost peacock feather and a birds next with 3 eggs waiting to hatch (I need to work on my nests a little before I'm happy to share photos of them - I'm hoping a 5 year old will be more forgiving!)

I love quilting like this - free & easy - quilting what ever comes to mind next - experimenting with combinations of designs and shapes. Nothing could make me happier. (Although possibly someone feeding me diet coke & chocolate while I quilt .......) 

 

There is also a rather cute label on the back of this quilt. 

 

Practice Placemats - Free Motion Feathers

I am not very good at just 'practicing' there has to be a result or product at the end of it. Perhaps this is why my French Horn and Piano career never took off!

With Christmas soon upon us I decided that I could use up some fabric and make some placemats - improving my free motion quilting as I went. My idea was to choose a theme (feathers and leaves) and make 6 placemats. Here they are:

This design is based off of Leah Day's Feather Leaves. Mine doesn't seem to look anything like her's but I like it none the less.

This design I would call a traveling feather design. Again referencing Leah's website you could use the same approach as she demonstrates in Swirling Feathers. However I did not do such tight curves as she uses in this demonstration.

Again inspiration from Leah's site - Flowing Leaves

This one is a mix between Leah's Pearled Feather and a Feather design on Page 55 of Doodle Quilting.

This one is a plain leaf inside with feathers on the outer edge of the leaf.

Then a traveling leaf/vine with one echo around each design.

Here are the placemats all together. They were a cute addition to the families Secret Santa game.