T is for Tulip

For me with this theme the challenge was not how to interpret it but which technic to use.

As I had made several journal quilts with the tulip theme in the past year including the quilt for our love theme I decided to use this flower again for the last quilt of the year and of this cycle.

I decided to use my big tulip thermofax screen and add the word tulip on the quilt. While trying to decide which technic I should use for the letters I decided that as a greeting to all the current members of our group I would write the word tulip in each of our languages (french, german, english, swedish, norwegian and russian). Since the russian language uses another alphabet than ours stamping was excluded. I decided against stitching and choose writing with a fabric pen. As I had screenprinted a golden tulip on a dark purple background and already decided to use a yellow background for the quilt I used a purple pen on the same yellow fabric than the background.

To add some more sparkle I also fused a golden metallic foil T on another purple piece of fabric.



I used a tulip stamp and gold paint on the background. The tulips were free motion quilted, then I stippled the background in between of the stamped tulips.

The yellow fabric with the words was layered on more purple fabric for contrast and I appliquéed all the pieces with a zig-zag stitch. Initially I had planed to use hand stitching for the appliqué but I finally tought that it didn't look good with the free motion quilted background.

Commercial hand dyed cotton fabric

Polyester batting

Polyester thread

Screen printing, fused metallic foil, hand writing with fabric pen

Free motion quilting

Machine raw edge appliqué 

Sabine