Creative Journey Returns . . . Finally!

Yeah!  Finally some progress on that Creative Journey Quilt.

For those of you who are recent followers a couple of months ago I found a piece of patchwork and decided to make a small quilt to show you how I "grow" quilts. 

I'm not a pattern user, nor do I like to plan things out too much.  I guess you could say I'm a bit of a thrill seeker, (quiltwise, that is ... I'm a real wimp otherwise!). 

This quilt was supposed to be a "Creative Journey" which would unfold for both of us.  I thought it might be interesting for you to see how my creative process works, and it would be a good way for me to understand how I think, so hopefully I can learn some ways to speed up this process.

Recently I finished appliquing all of the butterflies around the border.  Once that was done, I was stuck.  I knew I wanted something "floral" in the center, but try as I might I couldn't figure out how I would do it.  I always had in my mind that there would be a few large flowers, with leaves, vines, smaller flowers, and more butterflies.  However, making that work on this patchwork background was going to be difficult.

Since there were so many colors I had to find a way to make whatever flowers I decided to applique stand out from the busy background.  I'm not a big fan of solid colors, (boring), but I realized that I might have to go that direction, at least as a way to give the flowers more presence.

So, I attacked my stash, looking for patterns I could fussy-cut to get floral shapes.  I found an Alexander Henry floral that I was able to cut up to make the "petals" of this flower.  I reverse appliqued it to the flower center I made with a turquoise batik, and two other fussy-cut pieces.  I also made some "vines" from green bias strips.  My plan is to have the vines connecting my flowers and allowing the design to mingle with the border.  Because I'm not sure what I'm going to add under this flower, (at least a leaf or two and another piece of vine), I did not applique the flower "petals" yet.  Once I'm happy with it I'll stitch it down and probably add some embellishment, (I'm thinking beads on the bright pink part of the petals).

Now that I have a general idea I've been collecting options for flower centers and petals.  When I'm working on something like this I like to have a lot of options so I can try things out.  Here's a sample of what I've collected already.  Remember, I may not use all of these and those that look like they might not "match" can be changed by adding embroidery and embellishments.

I also collected a bunch of green fabrics and hand cut some leaf shapes.  I've basted the edges down and now have a collection to try out and see what works.  I've been sure to collect different shades of green, some with blue and pink in them to give me a way to integrate the "green" into the rest of the piece.

I'm actually excited about this again and am looking forward to tackling it tonight after I get back from my son's basketball practice.  I was feeling a little overwhelmed but when I got my bag back from the Quilt Quest, (last post), I was inspired and couldn't wait to tackle this project again.  Itchy thimble I guess!

Let's hope I can keep this up and nothing else happens to put me behind.  Oh well, what can you do, life happens!

Happy Stitching!

Susan