Painted Flowers and a Blooming Quilt!

Ever wished you could paint a flower with FMQ? Well now you can. My sister admin, Sandra Pearson, at Fun with Free Motion Quilting has produced a fun little pattern called Painted Flower.

The pattern is two flower design pieces which join to make the basic pattern, plus an instruction sheet. The flower design is drawn onto fabric using a light box. Then you fill in the petals with FMQ designs of your choice. A layer of batting under the design gives extra dimension to the bloom. Here is Sandra’s version.

I gave Sandra’s pattern a try and came up with these two.

My first shot at it! The fabric was rather thin and despite starching it, it wrinkled when I went to quilt the background.

Here is my Purple Haze Painted Flower. I used Moda Grunge, which is nice and sturdy and held up well to the dense flower & background quilting. I used a layer of bamboo under the flower and then an additional layer of bamboo under the entire block. I added a border of Grunge Metallic Dots and am going to make it into a pillow for a grand daughter for Christmas.

Then I thought, “This would make a great little quilt“. And I spend a little time on EQ8 and came up with a simple design for a 53” square lap quilt.

You can make the Blooming Quilt, or just a Painted Flower block, or two. Everything is in this workbook.

Happy Quilting! Lennea