Watercolor Coneflowers is my quilt for the Fall 2012 Blogger’s Quilt Festival. It’s a small art quilt that I’ve been working on to donate to the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (which has already raised over $773,000 to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s and fund research). Both of my parents suffered from Alzheimer’s, and you can read more about why I support AAQI here.
Here’s Watercolor Coneflowers. It’s about 9 inches wide by 12 inches high.
To create this quilt, I started with some photos I’d taken of coneflowers in my yard. In Photoshop, I edited out all the extraneous stuff and reduced the flowers to black and white sketches.
Then, using many layers in Photoshop, I colored the sketch to get a watercolor feel. Here’s the result which I had printed on fabric at Spoonflower.com.
I didn’t get any in-progress photos of the quilting, but I obviously did a lot of thread painting to fill in the flowers and leaves. Here’s the front and the back before the final trimming and mounting.
To finish the quilt, I mounted it on a very heavy-weight interfacing (Peltex 70) which I’d covered with my hand-dyed fabric. The heavy interfacing gives the quilt a firm frame, almost like putting it into a picture frame.
Here’s a detail of the final quilt.
Thanks for looking at my quilt, and I hope you enjoy all the other amazing quilts in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival.
Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats: Finished quilt measures : 9″x 12″; Special techniques used include thread painting and photo printed on fabric;Quilted by Jean Cheszek; Best Categories — Art Quilt or Wall Hanging.
Every stage of life is interesting — even this one. — My Mother, 2002, in the later stages of Alzheimer’s
Color On Cloth 
Lovely quilt – thanks for sharing your process, it’s so instructive for those of us who are new to art quilts.
Fabulous! Love it. Thanks for sharing how you did this. Have a friend’s photo of sunflowers i’ve been wanting to make into a quilt. This might be a way to try. Have a great day. Sorry about your family’s struggle with such a hard disease. Fantastic the money raised–hopefully soon there will be a cure
This is gorgeous, I love it!
beautiful quilt flowers are so realistic
Ann
What a fabulous technique. I really need to make friends with Photoshop.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing your process.
That’s very beautifully done. Reminds me of these mugs – http://www.etsy.com/listing/62476626/hand-painted-ceramic-travel-mug-poppy?ref=v1_other_1
Very pretty! Your quilting is beautiful!
That is simply amazing! I would so very much like to be able to do this type of thing. You are very talented.
wow, so much work but so worth the effort. Thanks for visiting my homepage.
This is stunning and uses so many beautiful thread techniques
Kudos, definitely captured the beauty of coneflowers — such a great flower and such a great quilt.
Come see my entries #23 antique zigzag and #46 repro tulip batik
Very lovely.
Your Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilt is stunning!!! I appreciate you sharing the different steps. Thank you for supporting the AAQI. Your mother’s quote at the end is heartwarming.