My Surprise Quilt for Material Mavens

"Surprise in the Midst of Drought" is what I named this quilt

Last Tuesday, November 15th, was the second "reveal day" for  the international art quilting group of which I am a member, The Material Mavens.  Our first theme was Harmony; this second one was Surprise.  I based my little 12"x12" quilt on a lovely discovery I made on September 16, the day after our first reveal.  It was still hot, still summer here in Texas, so I set out on a walk very early in the morning.  Just a block from my house, I saw in the middle of a patch of weeds some little wild flowers blooming.  We'd not had rain for months!  How could they have survived?  I thought about these flowers while I walked, and then realized that they could be turned into a quilt on our new theme, Surprise.  So I went back home for my camera and took several photos.  The one I liked best was this one:

I used batiks for most of the dead weeds and also for the flowers' living ones and for the flowers themselves.  A fusible web was added to the fabrics before I sliced them into various lengths and widths, and then I fused them to the background fabric, which was a left over piece from the fabric I painted for the Three Boys quilt--the beach fabric.  I couched two different yarns to for more weeds, and after I cut free hand some flowers and leaves, I appliqued them by machine with a tiny zig zag stitch.  Then I used an embroidery running stitch and embroidery floss for the quilting.

I will post on our Material Mavens blog some additional "process" photos, and more details about the construction of this little quilt.  But here are a few photos of the quilt in process:

fusing the first weeds down to the background

couching the gold yarn for more weeds

couching the brown, "hairy" yarn

appliqueing by machine the flowers and leaves

a close-up of the embroidery stitches  used for quilting this piece