Golden Tulips

Our challenge Extreme combined with my personal one, Tulips could give many solutions. But tulips tends to grow very long stems even after they have been put in a vase, so I decided to focus on that. My tulips have extremely long stems compared to the heads. I also wanted the stems to weave together, not standing straight, and as I drew them, they suddenly became brother at the bottom.
For once, I also wanted to work with golden foil - so golden tulips. But I needed a focal-point, so I put in one tulip, bowing down to the viewer.
This done in my sketchbook, I had to figure out how to interpret this in fabric. I decided to quilt the whole piece first, then paint in the stems with fabric paint, glue and foil for the heads. The big one was red fabric bonded on before the gold foil was put on. And a little quilt finish just as a hint. I have not tried to make realistic tulips, just a suggestion.

and some close ups:

City flowerbeds and oriental tiles

May be you have noticed that I like circles and wavy lines. 

So I‘ve decided to use these shapes for Art Deco theme.

After the design forms were chosen it was time to find the main idea of my “city” quilt.

I live in a very green city with a lot of flowerbeds and at the same time we have many building with oriental tiles and I decided to combine these two beauties in one quilt.

Tulips in green

I love tulips. They have been blooming here in Bergen, Norway, since the spring of 1596. There even is a tulip that only exist in Norway, named Tulipa norvegica. So it was natural for me to make my personal theme for 2015 Tulips. And the group-challenge this time was green.

I am so fascinated by variety in the shapes of the flowers, they are so elegant.

I decided to use this sage-green fabric I had hand-dyed, as my background.

I made squares with oil-sticks, and in these frames I embroidered the tulip-heads with free-hand machine stitching, and added some stems and leaves. Then I filled the background with machine and hand quilting.

All in green, apart from the flowers which have a mix of black and very dark green thread.

Some close-ups: