Daisy's Chickenpox

Having finished two small quilts, I felt it was time to tackle a UFO.  But the quilt I wanted to make was not one that was already started.  It was a kit I had purchased a while back. It must have been on sale for a really good price since I don't usually buy kits.   It is made with batik fabrics. The kit included all the batik and other fun fabric for the daisies, but we had to buy the fabric for the background and the border (and of course the backing). Since I had recently become a Bag Lady at the quilt shop and would get a free fat quarter every time I visited the shop, I decided to get the remaining fabric one fat quarter at a time.  This delayed the time I could actually start the quilt.  I was looking for dotted background fabric, so there was a short delay until there was a new dotted fat quarter. The background was supposed to be light green and dark green, but I decided to expand to yellow so I wouldn't have to wait for light green dots. By the time I had enough fabric, I was too busy or had started another project or something.

I have often wanted to finish this quilt (and another batik quilt kit) so that I could get a chance to play with the leftover batiks.  This was my only source of batiks (aside from buying more).  Eventually I did buy more fabric and the two batik kits stayed in the back of the closet.

Now, even though I felt I should finish something that is already started, I decided to make this quilt while I was excited about making it.  After all, my brother wouldn't know what to do with a kit anymore than he would know what to do with a UFO.  I do plan to finish what I start so I don't create new UFOs.

Anyway there are only 16 blocks in this quilt.  When I whined about having to cut the weird shaped background fabric, I could tell myself I only have to do it 16 times.  It turned out that cutting those weird shapes wasn't a big deal at all, and it was actually fun to do curved seams again. Same with fusing and cutting the daisies.

This quilt is not a cheap one to make, since there is fusible behind all of the pieces of the flower.  There is the background daisy, a smaller inner daisy, and then the center circle.  The inner daisy is doublesided (two pieces of daisies with a fusible between) so that it can be left free for a three dimensional look. I was able to get yards of fusible for a really good price on Black Friday so now I have fusible for another quilt as well.

I secured the daisy on the background using a flower stitch on the machine.  I want to give this machine some heavy use while it is still under warranty.  I also want to take advantage of as many features of the machine.

The pattern is in a book called Follow the Dots...to Dazzling Quilts by Jayme Crow and Joan Segna and is called Daisies Do Tell by Jayme Crow. I believe this pattern is also available separately from the book.  The LQS kitted it with dotted fabric to go with the theme of the book.   Since I'm not selling it, I don't have to be politically correct, and am calling it Daisy's Chickenpox.