Water Lily

Water Lily was intended as a study piece, a chance to use some new to me techniques. 
As inspiration I used a personal photo of white water lilies on the lake.



I started work on the piece by first laying down the backing.
I then added the batting. I used a single piece of wool blend craft felt for the batting.
The background starts with strips of 30's fabric, covered with pieces  from 4 vintage handkerchiefs.
The handkerchiefs are lightly painted with Tsukineko Inks to form the lake and the treeline.
The background is then free motion quilted. 
   
Individual leaves were cut out and embellished with crayon highlights.
Yellow embroidery details are added to the white flowers.
  
Leaves and flowers are added with free motion quilting.
Running along with the treeline wording is added using free motion quilting.
The binding edge is a decorative machine stitch.
Finished: 10 3/4" X 16 1/2"

Some of the techniques I was experimenting with are: Handwriting in free motion quilting,
Craft felt as a batting, the use of crayons, and always more practice free motion quilting.

I learned a lot from working on this piece and I think the end result is cute.
For an improvement I think I would like the background a bit darker so the flowers could pop a bit more.
The craft felt worked well for a small piece like this and I will use it again.
Handwriting was fun and I will also use that again.
I hope you enjoyed learning about how I worked on this piece.