Flowerburst {WIP 4 of 12}

I am sneaking in very early for this months 12WIPS in 2012 challenge. I started this quilt in October 2011! Wow I cant believe it was 6 months ago! I all but finished Flowerburst quilt in January this year, but as I had already done my WIP challenge for that month I put this one aside with just the binding to stitch down. Flowerburst can my my April finish for the challenge.

The main body of the quilt design is an interlocking star design, but I reversed the usual fabric combinations. Using my background fabric for the stars allowed the four leaf flowers to suddenly 'burst' out from the yellow negative space.

I think this is pretty clever.. you can get two completely different quilts from the one design. I can imagine doing this for boy/girl siblings, the boy one looking more like my recent I Spy star quilt, and the girly one as a flowerburst design.

I framed the field of flowers in a border of half triangle squares. This quilt was created from my fabric stash. I used about a yard of yellow for the 'field' and scraps for the flower petals. the border was made from half yard cuts of fabric. The binding was also from my stash, and I think it complements nicely all the other colours in the quilt.

For the quilting I used a loopy stipple in yellow thread over the yellow 'field. The flowers are unquilted, and I also echo stitched around each one, so they really stand up from the quilt.

The border was quilted in zigzag lines in a thread colour matching each of the two fabrics used.

I like the look of the quilting on the back. This piece of fabric was also from my stash. I like to think of it as a more bohemian version of the front!

The finished quilt is approx 30" x 35", perfect as a newborn quilt. It has joined these two mini quilts as gifts for very sick newborn babies.