Making a quilt part 2

There are many things to consider when making a quilt, size, colour, design, composition. The competition challenge requirements are dictating several parameters for this quilt -size, theme and fabric to be used, it is also for machine quilting competition - so the machine quilting need to be a big part of the overall effect.
Starting with a white design wall, the fabric and the theme Celebration, I have designed a basic floral spray, one of the main emphasis' of this quilt will be the machine quilting, so leaving lots of space for that is always in the back of my mind when designing.

Cutting out shapes, saving each last piece, just in case I need to use it. There is nothing worse than running out of fabric, in this case I only have a small amount of each one. I am using an iron on fusible webbing for ease when adhering the shapes to the background, and speed in creation!

I have chosen a cream background fabric with gold dots on, the gold is quite dense at the bottom, then becomes less dense towards the top of the fabric, creating a secondary design. I am hoping that the background will not detract from the machine quilting when it is completed, but create an interesting, but not to overpowering aspect.

 

 Using my petal shapes, and choosing where to put them. I decided on 3 simple flowers, using the red, orange, purple and blue fabrics for the flowers themselves, and the green and grey for the stems. I added one red print for some variety as the selected, and 'must be used  in a recognisable amount' in this challenge prints, are a little flat.

One version, the balance is not there, the stems are not flowing nicely, some tweaking led me to the next layout, I am quite happy with this. It does need a little fine tuning when the pieces are ironed onto the background.

 The final layout, the flowers and stems need to be ironed down, then some serious stitching needs to happen. I am happy with the balance, it has a good structure, the next phase of stitching will finish it off and give it life- I hope!