Nasturtiums with zip Size: H:122xW:74cm

This is the quilt I made after picking some nasturtiums for a salad a couple of months ago. First I made the background from odd ieces of cotton simply zig-zagged together with overlapping edges. I then finished the background off as a quilt with binding and zig-zag quilting.
That left the leaves and flowers which were all made individually with dressmaking stiffening inside a double turned piece which was then stitched quite heavily to give some substance to the petals and leaves. I then stitched these on by hand, some with invisible stitching and some with embroidery thread. Then I added some flat shiny glass beads to the flowers only but I'm still considering whether to add anything to the dark leaves. I quite like the darkness as a contrast to the flowers. This quilt is all cotton which is unusual for me. I had forgotten what it was like to use.

Bottlebrush

A few weeks ago I sent two entries into an exhibition at the Braemar Gallery in the Blue Mountains a little west of Sydney in NSW and both got in. The exhibition is always on some aspect of re-fabricating and has been curated by Anabelle Solomon since it started some years ago now.
They were not new quilts so you may have seen this picture before. I just got news that this is the one which sold, so I am pretty chuffed at selling two in the month.
This is a wool quilt and the flowers are knitted with a loop stitch so they are quite 3 dimensional. The dark leaves are the remnants of a pheran I brought back from Kashmir for my sister, and which was very thick felted wool. (A pheran is a sort of coat under which the locals carry a small fire-pot in winter, so that everyone looks pregnant. ) The rest of the leaves and background are hand-dyed woollen blanket. It is not very big - 65 x 77cm.