I have been wanting to paint large flowers for awhile and so this art quilt is literally a bigger is better art project. My ultimate goal is to paint a very, very large flower that fills up a 36″ piece of fabric. The size of this one is 36″ by 36″ before the sewn border. So I am working up to the larger design. Like all quilters sometimes you get stuck on the same color schemes and all of the sudden each project starts looking too similar. With this art quilt I wanted to expand my range of colors and work on more complementary colors not only for the subject matter but also the background. Here is a breakdown of the process from inspiration to attaching the first border. I found my inspiration picture in a magazine and I left the caption on the top to give you a good laugh. I measured the proportion between the petals and the middle circle and then drew them in the same proportion on a large piece of white paper with felt tip pen. Then I traced it using the light box onto the fabric with a pencil. Next stage was painting the pink pedals and then the middle section. My whole goal with this art quilt was creating depth on the pedal layers. Using the complementary color for pink which of course is purple helped to shade and define each pedal and made them not appear so flat. To create the middle section I painted the yellow first and then went back and put the pink around it. Using dark blue, magenta & yellow and the middle kind of created itself. Using vandyke brown around the outside edge of the yellow center helped the transition from pink to yellow. Now it was time to do the background. In most of my art quilts I paint the background last because it is hard to paint over fabric that is already painted. If you look at flowers in nature most of them have green leaves and from an artist perspective flowers literally float on a sea of green when growing. There is about five different colors of green in the background with yellow thrown around to break it up. I used ultramarine blue to create some depth amongst the green. The background is still a work in progress, seems like it needs more dark areas. I read somewhere that if you take a picture of your work and print it out in black & white you can get a better idea if you have enough depth. This picture definitely gives you another way of looking at this art design. After doing this I am not going to work on the background again till I get the painted border on. Lastly I took a black sharpee pen and started to outlining the pedals and middle of the flowers. Again I will fine tune that when the painted border is attached. I chose dark purple for my first border that the painted border will lay on top of and then I will machine applique it to the art quilt. Here is a picture of the blank border strips ready to be created and then painted.I have enjoyed this art project so far because I love bright colors and the way they can wow you. I am already dreaming up a way to quilt it to further pop out those flowers. Now back to the drawing board to figure out the border design. I’m thinking mayber flowers with a pink ribbon or maybe just big leaves or maybe? If you guys have any ideas would love to hear them…