An Applique Art Quilt : :

It feels so good to share this finished quilt today! I decided to call it my Applique Art Quilt, but was also thinking of calling it my "A" Quilt. "A" for lots & lots of Anna Maria Horner fabrics, for Art Gallery Fabric's Pure Elements, for Aurifil thread, for applique, and an "A" for the sketch stitch art piece I designed this finished quilt around. Lots of A's!! And, as it turns out my very favorite photo from my picture taking was on this pretty apple tree, perfect!



I tried my best to take photos of the whole finished quilt. A few in some of the beautiful spots we discovered on our walk the other night, along with a few others with a painted church door and an old brick chimney as my backdrop.







Right away, I could tell that this is just one of those quilts that truly shines up close and in person. It really is the details that makes this quilt for me, which I wrote about here back when I shared the finished quilt top.



A quilt that started a couple of Summers ago with a panel of handwork -- yo yo flowers made in Little Folks Voile and many little stitches!



That quilt grew around my sketch stitch girl, with lots of improv patchwork, and one large block made of neutral pure element solids appliqued with fussy cut moths & butterflies from Anna's beautiful Sinister Swarm Field Study & Clippings Loulouthi prints!  



That was finally quilted with several colors of variegated Aurifil, combined with some of the fun quilting stitches my Janome offers, as well as some simple hand quilted stitches that I really enjoyed adding!



It's backed in one large piece of Coreopsis in Lime from the Loulouthi collection. I wish I would have taken photos with a bit more of the sky here, the bright green corn field and the blue sky matched this print perfectly! It was so gorgeous to see!





I finished the quilt by binding in this Hugs & Kisses in wine print, again from the Loulouthi collection. I'm so glad I stashed some extra yardage of this particular print in each color a while back with my owl pillows in mind. It makes an awesome binding!!



I wish you could feel this picture! The Little Folks Voile and the Art Gallery fabrics make this quilt so, incredibly soft!!



This quilt is the first quilt of many quilts I hope to make in this style. I have several sketch stitch pieces & some newly stashed Hand Draw Garden just waiting to become quilts, and I'm excited to jump right into the next one! Throughout making this one I did, at times, put pressure on myself to see it finished quickly. But every single time I would get it out to work on I would end up changing directions. In the end, I learned that that's okay, it came together in perfect timing, and now I'm ready to send it off to my friend!

Last year, right around this time, I had stepped away from this blog those last several weeks of Summer to spend with my kiddos before they went off to school. I was really struggling with my health, but mostly with the changes that were in store for me with my last baby heading off to school. It was tough, that day we took them all to school was so hard for me, but was made so much easier when that afternoon an amazing quilt was delivered to me all the way from Australia, made by my sweet & thoughtful blog friend Jodi. I shared here just how wonderful that was and I promised Jodi a friendship quilt in return. A quilt to be made with nothing but Anna Maria Horner fabrics, lots & lots of love, and hope to be able to show her how much what she did meant to me.



Having this blog and all of you to share with means so much to me, thank you all for encouraging me the way you do. This is such a dream come true!!    ♥   Maureen