Sunflowers
Green and yellow fabrics
Lovely bright colours for a baby quilt

I know it’s really too early for sunflowers, but this lovely sunny weather makes me think of them and it is about the right time to plant them. The bright yellow is just so cheerful and we could all do with a bit of cheering up at the moment, so I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve made over the years with sunflowers as the inspiration.

Cot quilts
both using the same fabrics as the starting point.
Jelly roll of sunflower fabrics.
Most of the prints have a version on a white and a black background which I’ve utilised in the overall design giving light and dark stripes.
This is single bed or double lap quilt size, with fleece on the back to make it cosier.
Left over tiny bits of the jelly roll
English paper piecing with Ruth Neller at Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild.
I thought this was really not my thing but enjoyed playing with how to combine the various bits to make a sunglasses case.
It’s a fiddly technique and I have no inclination to do anything bigger.
Felted sunflowers
Nearly 2 metres wide by 1 metre high

The background was a neutral pre-felted piece 2 metres by a metre
with fleece applied (vertically and horizontally) from the top left to right, working down to just below the middle in a painterly fashion.
The large foreground sunflowers were wet felted and dried as individual pieces before adding to the whole piece then it was all wet felted.
It hangs at the top of the stairs and can be seen coming out of two bedrooms and on the landing. I visualised it in just that spot long before it was made.
This was a mark making exercise in charcoal I did in a drawing module while doing my degree at Hull School of Art and Design.
Scary where the time has gone. On my 50th birthday I went for an interview at Lincoln College of Art and Design, my 60th last week spent in lockdown.
The same seed head as used for the drawing above was used to make a mould which was used for the plaster one on the right. Also made wax ones and an ice one as part of the Sculpture module.
This was done for Sandra’s travelling book a couple of years ago. A technique shown to me by Jan Dowson, bond-a-web, snippets of fabric a chiffon scarf.

Another early piece, with my favourite chain stitch and beads in the middle. I think it’s another UFO / PHD. The embroidery is done, just needs framing or making into a book cover. Not even sure where it is hiding!

And last, but not least.
This is a fused glass sunflower I did in a workshop with Hazel Burnham last autumn for Colin’s Christmas present. It hangs in the landing window,
so a bit of a sunflower theme on the landing