Maple leaf art quilt – finished – 2019.12.27

My first post about this quilt was at the end of November, although I started designing it in mid-November. If you’d like to read about my design and construction process, my previous 5 posts have lots of information and photos.

So I’ve been working on this for more than a month. And, now it’s finished. (Well, it’s finished enough to take photos of the front. The back still needs some work – the facings have to sewn or fused to the back, a sleeve attached and the ever-important label created and attached.)

In my last post, I showed the leave shapes that I cut from the full-size paper pattern. I cut the paper all in one piece, to maintain the relationship between the leaves. After I took this photo, I drew vertical lines on the paper to help me remember how the leaves lined up on the background.

I attached each leaf to the background, quilting around the edges and through each vein. I matched my thread color to the boiled wool base layer of each individual leaf. It blended in very well. In the photo below, you can see the quilting on the bottom leaf, but it almost disappears on the others.

I started with the top right leaf, because it is overlapped by two other leaves. Then I added the top left leaf. I was a little nervous that it would be difficult to quilt through all the layers where the leaves overlapped, but it was fine. I neglected to take photos as I quilted the 5 leaves to the background, but I can say that it took me at least an hour to attach each leaf. (The cotton fabrics were quilted to the boiled wool base layers before I attached the leaves to the background – see my previous post for photos of that step.)

Here’s the finished quilt. It’s 35″ wide by 38.5″ high. The smallest leaf is 16″ wide and the largest is 20″ wide. I titled it ‘The Magical Colours of Autumn’. Yesterday I submitted it to the SAQA call for entry Colour with a U. I’ll find out in mid-February if it’s accepted for the exhibit.

This quilt is larger than I have been making lately. So it felt like it took a long time to complete. But I really like the finished art quilt, and do plan to make more large-scale projects in the future.

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

• Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
• Can I get a Whoop Whoop? by Confessions of a Fabric Addict