Flowery Finish

We had a nice get-together with family. Everyone left with a full stomach, and that makes every mother happy, I suppose. There was quite a bit to do yesterday morning to finish off our meal. Still, I took some time to work on my slow-stitching. Enough was stitched for me to move my hoop to the next position. This portion finishes off the left side.

The right side extends higher, but the back-and-forths will be shorter now. I'll be linking up to:

After that, I needed to finish off the lemon meringue pie I'd started the day before. Although I've made this pie successfully several times, it still scares me putting it all together.

Then, there's always the worry that the custard hasn't set up, and no way to know until we cut into it. As it turns out, this one was just right. There are still three pieces leftover. I tried to foist them off onto the kids, but they wouldn't take them. I guess Mike and I will have to finish it off. A sad state of affairs, I know. There were baked beans in the oven...those pretty much cooked themselves...and I started the pulled chicken in the slow cooker. After that, I had the afternoon mostly free.

There was plenty of time to finish off the binding on the Peruvian Sunflowers quilt. When I downloaded this picture, I noticed how nicely the binding blends in with my dining room table.

Okay, so I believe I've already mentioned this quilt was inspired by a watercolor painting from a life-long friend, Kathy. Kathy and I first met in junior high school. We had the same last name of "Nelson," but no relation. Kathy was in the girls' glee club. I wasn't in the glee club, but I was their accompanist on piano. Occasionally, I needed a page-turner, and Kathy sat beside me for those pieces. Fast forward a couple of decades, and we found one another again on Facebook. 

So Kathy and her husband served a mission in Peru for their church. This is the story she told me about the inspiration for her watercolor painting:

"The streets of Viru [Peru] are nothing but cement, sidewalks, brick buildings, and dirt streets. I had spent the day there with our missionaries and I was really sad that it was so depressing. I asked Heavenly Father if I could see something beautiful. As I turn the corner, growing out of a crack in the sidewalk were these beautiful sunflowers. It brightened my day, and it changed my countenance. I realize that God finds beauty in all things, and all people. And that just because I only saw a dusty town, God saw a beautiful garden. And He let me see the town as he sees the people of Viru, full of life, love and beauty."

Here is Kathy's watercolor painting:

And here is my finished quilt, created with Kathy's permission:

This was made in response to the next challenge for The Endeavourers art quilt group. The Endeavourers reveal isn't until May 1st, and I'll be writing a post for their blog later. There was no prompt for this challenge. Also, we didn't have to keep it a secret until the reveal, and so I can show it to you now. With no prompt, I decided to try this "thread painting" technique. I've only made one other small quilt using the technique, and the sunflowers in Kathy's painting lended themselves well to it. 

Here are a couple of close-ups of the thread-painting. I wanted to say just a little more about it. When I started with the applique, I had to decide whether to make individual petals or create the flowers from just one piece. I opted to let the thread do most of the work, and created the flowers from one piece of fabric. Then, I stitched in details based on the shape of the individual petals, putting just a little extra thread down as a boundary between them. Here's a close-up of the largest yellow flower.

I stitched around the edges of the fabric to hold it in place, but where the boundary between one petal and the next was created with thread, I stitched back and forth over the same line of stitching four times, and then "painted" the remainder of the petal following its shape. I hope you can see what I'm talking about, and I hope it makes sense. 

Looking closely below, you can see that I've stitched veins in the leaves the same way.

Finally, the sunflower theme allowed me to stand in solidarity with the courageous people of Ukraine, and so I created the quilt back using the colors of the Ukraine flag. It finishes at 19 x 24 inches.

I'll be putting my quilt in the mail to Kathy this week as my gift to her for her graciously allowing me to use her painting as the subject matter for this challenge. It's good to have it finished.

Okay, so up next is to start quilting the Charm Stars quilt. There isn't much else on today's agenda. The weather is looking promising. It might be a good day to attack some of the weeds outside.