a present unveiled

I am so excited to finally be posting photos of this quilt... Although Lazy Crafternoons often produce things you want to show off and be proud of, you have to keep mum about the things you make which are going to be gifts.

I've been sitting on this work for a while now, waiting until my friend's wedding day when I can let the secret out.

I took this photo a few years ago during Autumn, and was inspired by the way the leaves looked scattered across the patchwork-like tiles.



I actually took this photo, to show off how enormous the leaves were, but when I stood back and looked at the image, it reminded me of a quilt.

With the help of some quilting skills once imparted to me when I was a child, by my great aunt and a heapload of internet tutorials, I have up with a way to interpret the tiles into a patchwork, and then came up with a leaf design which I could patchwork together and them applique to the quilt.

Since it was my first endeavour and I was a bit unsure of doing the acutal quilting, I enlisted the help of a long arm quilting service to finsh off and bind the patchwork. I just wanted it to be perfect, and didn't trust myself to not to ruin it in the quilting process after all my hard work on the front and back.




The back is done with a single wide stripe and a few leaf cut outs so there was an alternative to the busy top... and in one of the leaves I wrote my friends name and their marriage date with fabric pen.



Working on this quilt obviously took more than just one lazy crafternoon, and although my work was inspired by the original photo, it was also fuelled by a wide range of inspirations, much of which came from the quilting forums on craftster.com ... hopefully this quilt can be one little addition to the vast array of works out there, and add to the collective pool of textile creativity!