Cattails . . .

Looking through my books for something to quilt, I found A Black & White Garden by Kay M. Capps Cross.  This book was one of the first books I purchased when I started quilting five years ago.  I don't know about you, but I have tons of scraps and a lot of black and white fabrics that were calling my name.  On page 38 she gives instructions for making a small wall hanging that she named Limetail.  She chose to use black and white fabrics for her background and do her cattails in lime green.  Lovely!  She pieced her background and appliqued her Limetails onto the surface.

I chose to crazy quilt my block with different scraps from my black and white stash.  Then I found a scrap of lime green batik to use for my cattails.  I also decided that I needed the sun and chose to do it in lime green as well.

After piecing my crazy quilt block, I decided to do a continuous circle quilting pattern.

I tried to get a close up . . . as you can see my circle is not perfect but it serves the purpose.  From the back side you can get a better idea of the continuous circle pattern.

This is the block after adding my cattails.  I chose to fuse them to the block and instead of using a blanket stitch I free-motion stitched them to the block.

After adding the cattails, I decided it needed a sun with a little bling so I fused a lime green sun and added green glitter glue for the rays and a lovely gem to the center.

To finish it off, I satin stitched the block to a piece of black batting and trimmed the batting to about a 1/2" around all four sides.  A finished wall hanging. 

I fell in love with the cattails and decided that I should do another one but different.  I pulled blue and green scraps from my stash and randomly cut them into squares and rectangles.  I cut a piece of Peltex two-sided fusible stablizer and layed them randomly using blue for the sky and green for the grass.  After fusing to the Peltex, I did a zigzag stitch around each edge of the squares and rectangles first in blue and then green thread.

Then added a piece of coordinating fabric to the back fusing it to the Peltex and satin stitched the edges to finish it off.  What do you think?

Totally different yet I like it, too.  I guess I just like scrappy quilts!

This is a GREAT book with lots of modern ideas for wall quilts and worth the money.  I intend on doing several more!

I had lots of help doing these projects . . . two of my nine grandchildren.

This was a fun project from the process to the finished quilts.  That's the

key to enjoying whatever you do, JUST HAVE FUN!