Just in the nick of time...

Does this look familiar? It should. This is my entry for the Moda Bakeshop Monthly Contest for March. I started on it in early February, and should have had plenty of time to finish it before today, but there was that trip out of state and me getting sick...



The contest for March was to recreate a tutorial from the Bakeshop blog with Charm Packs (5" squares). I chose the Lolipop Quilt
but instead of making the applique lolipops, I chose to follow the original intent of the tutorial and enlarge the floral motifs from the Fresh Flowers line. The idea struck, and once I saw the little swirls in the centers of flowers that echoed the embroidered swirls in the Lolipop Quilt, I knew that I had to do it!



Originally, I tried sketching my floral designs on graph paper to make sure all of my flower petals were perfectly proportioned. It only took a couple sketches for me to realize two things. Number one, I was sketching in a 5" X 10" field and leaving myself no room for seam allowances, and two, the perfect graph paper petals took away from the hand-drawn quality that I loved so much about the fabric design. (By the way, it turns out that the reason the flowers had a hand drawn quality is that the designer, Deb Strain, actually hand paints her fabric samples! Amazing!)



And finally, just a little close up collage of my interpretations. Check out all of the contest entries (and get an idea of the scope of projects at the Bakeshop) in the Flikr group here.