The Story of “Wildflower Honey”

I saw a blog post from my friend Maria Shell yesterday reminding me about the Blogger’s Quilt Festival going on now. I realized I only had one day left to enter, so I’ve decided to tell the story of “Wildflower Honey” for the Modern Quilt category.

I created this quilt–20″x 20″–for the Cherrywood Fabric Lion King Challenge earlier this year. Cherrywood is my favorite fabric and I thought it would be fun to give the challenge a try. I knew it was something of a long shot that my quilt would be accepted, because I do abstract work, not realism.

I bought the bundle of fabrics that were required for the challenge–three golds and one black. You were allowed to add small amounts of other Cherrywood fabrics to create the design. The golds were a little bit outside my comfort zone, but I was up to the task!

The central block is improvisationally pieced using the golds, plus some scraps of light red, lime green, and yellow. I don’t usually use black in my designs, but I added a few strips in and was happy with the way they helped to make the rest of the design pop. I added four asymmetrical borders outlined with black lines, and quilted different motifs in each one–fans, seashells and flames, and round and square spirals.

My quilt wasn’t accepted. No real surprise, once I saw the accepted entries. Most of them were much more realistic than mine, so it really didn’t fit with the others. I was uncertain about what to do with it though, and whether it was good enough to show somewhere else–maybe because the colors were not my usual?

I put it in with several other quilts I had ready for the photographer later in the summer and posted a picture of them waiting for him to be ready for their shot on Instagram and Facebook. I was really surprised that so many people commented on how “Wildflower” stood out! So I renamed it, and gave it a prominent place in my show booth. I also featured it in a newsletter article recently about second chances in art and in life.

“Wildflower Honey” has definitely gotten a new lease on life!

Please visit the Blogger’s Quilt Festival and take a look at the quilts featured in each category–you can vote for your favorites too!