Aurifil Challenge - August

August's challenge was "applique".  I have only made two applique projects, and both were made with the same technique I applied here (since it's the only one I know how to do!) 

I decided to make a mini quilt using a free sunflower image I found online.

My sunflower will be simplified - I'm only planning on copying the petal placement and a single leaf.  As much as I love red sunflowers (we planted 30 this spring) my mini will use as many different golden scraps as I can find.

After tracing the sunflower onto a white cotton fabric I counted the petals (33) and starting pulling scraps.
Since my flower will end up being about 7", I'm only pulling from my skinnier bucket.  All of these scraps are between 1" and 2 1/4" wide and up to the width of fabric long.

I eyeballed my petal length.  The majority ended up being between 3 & 4" long.
I also made sure that I had mostly nondirectional prints since these will be going all the way around and I don't want to have to figure out placement while I'm cutting.

After cutting the scraps to size I also cut some Heat N Bond Lite in roughly the same size as my scraps.

Next I put my iron on medium & attached the Heat N Bond to the scraps.  Some of the pieces needed to be trimmed a bit and I was very careful not to let there be any overage, since I didn't want it to melt on my wool pressing mat.

After all 33 pieces had HNB on the back, I put my guide next to my workspace & started cutting the petal shapes.  I tried to keep them realistic & organic, making some thick, some thin & some with curves near the tip.

I peeled off the backing and started placing the petals around the tracing I made, making sure to keep my directional prints going the correct ways. 
I also tried to space out the scraps that had other colours (pinks, reds, blacks) so that they didn't end up all in one section. 

I ironed the petals on to the white fabric, then added my brown center, and trimmed around the whole things leaving just a sliver of the white fabric.

After basting my layers together (white, batting, blue) I quilted straight lines with various Aurifil threads (1200, 2140, 2735, 5005) randomly across the mini.
Then I swapped to my free motion quilting foot, traced the petals & added pebbles in the center to look like seeds. 

I trimmed it, bound it with yellow stripes & hung it with the rest of my sunflowers!

The Wall also includes prints from Erin Wallace, Morgan Harper Nichols, Alireza Karimi Moghaddam and Asheron (crocodile with a broken heart)