Mexican Sunflower in Batik

Finished! This is the first quilt in my Sunflower Series. The pattern was made from a photograph I took of one of the Mexican Sunflowers in my garden. I decided to create this quilt in batiks, the next one will be in hand painted fabrics. My goal with these two quilts is to show the difference between using the batik and hand painted fabrics and to use a new technique on each quilt.
The next two pictures show the detail of thread painting (my favorite way to quilt) in the leaves and petals. I used the thread to create the detail and movement of the leaves and petals. I really like to extend the movement outside the lines and into the background. Somehow it helps create the flow of the flower into the background.
I did minimal quilting in the background of the quilt. I wanted the sunflower to keep the focus, so I used the horizontal lines of the fabric and quilted with matching thread.
My new technique on this quilt was the use of hand painted cheesecloth in the center and then beading the seeds into and on the center of the quilt. This was a fun process. I hadn't used cheesecloth before. I first selected a brown batik looking fabric (my brown batiks are limited, so I had to punt). Next I hand painted some cheesecloth with different browns, bronze, and copper paints. While the cheesecloth was drying I created free motion embroidered circles on the center piece of fabric. I didn't put circles all over the fabric; I wanted to leave room for more circles after I laid the cheesecloth down. After the cheesecloth was dry I manipulated it by stretching and scrunching the cloth to make vacant and dense areas. Then it was time to free motion embroider around it and hand stitch the beads under the dense areas. Taking my time, I let my eye and follow the lights and dark areas of the fabric create the areas that were beaded.