The SAQA Spotlight Auction is coming up soon, and I thought I'd like to donate a quilt for this event. The size for these quilts is  6 x 8 inches, which would be easy for me to finish. They will be displayed in mats with a 4.5" x 6.5" opening,  and placed in clear cellophane sleeves. So when I was planning this quilt I had to think about how it would look with that opening. They furnished us with a template to download, and cut out to see how the finished piece would look. Here is what mine will look like with their frame.

So to get started I wanted to create something that was a tribute to Ukraine. Since the sunflower is their national flower, I wanted my piece to including sunflower appliques.

I started by tracing a clip art sunflower on my white fabric with a Frixion (erasable) pen. Here is a link to a blog post about these pens.

Then I sewed around each of the sunflowers.

Once completed I removed the pen marks with the iron.

Now to color them. I chose Inktense pencils with water. You can use water colors, fabric markers, or even paint.

Once they were dry, I stitched around them again and the centers.

Then I cut them out.

For the background I used a piece of my Azure Blue dyed fabric which I had backed with Craft-Fuse. I then added felt and another piece of that blue fabric. I started with stitching horizontal lines with the yellow thread.

I decided that wasn't enough so I stitched vertical rows. Here is the 6 x 8 inch background cut and ready to place the sunflowers.

I put the template over the piece and arranged the sunflowers. I didn't like the white edges of the sunflowers so I got out my Arteza fabric markers and colored in the edges bright orange, and put a little shading on some of the petals. Since the sides of the quilt will not be seen, I chose to just zigzag them. Here is the finished piece without the frame.

This is how it will look in the frame.

That was fun to get back into art. Thanks for dropping by. Now to go out and work in the garden.