Alium, Abstracted

The design for my Alium was created in an Abstracting from Nature workshop with Jane Sassaman probably a decade ago–yes some of my UFOs are SO old that I have begun to think of them as Golden Oldie UFOs. In addition to the great exercises that led to creating our own original designs, we learned a few appliqué techniques ... I tried them, but didn't feel they were "me" and it's probably why the finished quilt top remained unfinished for so long. While I was quilting it, I remembered how much I enjoyed the sketching exercises–note to self: must do more of that.

Before binding the quilt, I washed it as a sanity check to make sure the intense quilting in the background and border wouldn't distort the shape of the quilt.  My failure at executing the appliqué approach used on the flower and the bud was evident by the many frayed edges exposed ... and so I went back and needle-turned all those edges by hand.

Here are a close-up of the appliqué techniques and free-motion quilting.

It's approximately 21 by 26-inches.  The small size made it the perfect project to work on while I was thinking about what to do with a couple other projects. Now that it's finished, I have no excuses to get busy on some other (planned) projects ;-)

There are so many places to celebrate finishes in blog land.  I'm joining these parties with his post:

Angie's WIPs Be Gone
Richard and Tanya's Link a Finish Friday
Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? on Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Nina-Marie's Design Wall Friday
Fabric Frenzy Friday
QuiltShopGal's Creative Goodness Linky Party