Early Floral Quilts

Digging through all my old flower fabrics got me feeling nostalgic. As my machine quilting of the service quilt is not done yet, I thought I would post some work from my "Cut Out Flower" period, which actually lasted for several years during the mid 1990's. I guess I have always been crazy for flowers...
So here we go down Memory Lane. Captions are below each image....

This is the very first time I cut flowers out of printed fabric and machine appliqued them on. This is my son Max at age 2. My favorite part of this quilt is his tummy showing.

I tried making my own flowers out of cut out fabrics as in regular applique, but cut out the printed leaves. I didn't like these flowers so well...but I do love the cows. I am a former dairy farmer, after all.

Here are the girls up close and personal.


Wish I had a better shot of Thumbelina here....


This was created for a nuns' residence, the first time I combined lettering with the cut out flowers. These letters are painted on, but soon I began cutting them out, too. I was constantly changing thread on the machine to match the flower color, but pretty soon changed to clear monofilament.

This is a later, smaller version.

That Old English font was a doozy to work with! At this time in my life, new sharp scissors were my favorite thing to buy.

Here's a detail from "Peace". Loved those gold-edged Hoffman prints....

Then I started doing little "Sayings" quilts....

This was for a friend who got married and moved to Texas. After she got divorced and moved back to the Northwest, she gave it back to me.

Please don't ask. It was my brother's idea. I still have this one, too.

This was for my neighbor's daughter. She loves sunflowers.

And finally, this for the beautiful young Meera, a close family friend. "Fields of Gold" was just out by Sting and I think Meera liked that song. (I know I did.)

And now it is back to the machine quilting...this was fun!