Commisioned Work!

My dad is here visiting from Brazil. He was thrilled with a gift bag that I put his birthday present in, which had sunflowers. He makes trays and framed pictures using glass tiles, and adapts designs from cross-stitch patterns. I had a cross-stitch design of sunflowers which I then gave him. Just before he left to go visit my half brothers, he asked if I would make him a quilted wall hanging with sunflowers. He wasn't able to adapt the cross-stitch design and get what he wanted for doing something with the glass tiles.

I gave it some thought and decided to use some sunflowers fabric I had in my stash for sometime, waiting for an appropriate application. Having made one "convergence" at the retreat in AZ, I thought I'd try again. I played with "pebbles" for quilting the center and did minimal beading, after trying to embelish with buttons, larger beads, etc.

Learned a very important lesson. One must fuse raw edge applique before attempting to thread paint and thinking that longarm machine quilting will hold it down! NOT! Thankfully for zippered leaders, I took the whole thing off the longarm, and tried to do that work on a sit down machine, until I realized I should just fuse it first. I don't know why I was resisting that, because once I gave up trying to find alternatives, the fusing was easy, and everything else fell into place.

He hasn't seen it yet, and I hope he likes it and pays me handsomely for the project!! ;-) It's going to be a present for my aunt's 80th birthday. I need spending money for Paducah next week!