I took a workshop August, 2007 with some of my friends with Juanita Yaeger. Juanita was a friend of mine, and she was a part of the art quilting group.

It was a workshop to show us how you could quilt BEFORE you put your appliqué on your quilt top, how to use felt for backing, and how to use a stiffener under your appliqué. She had some patterns of petunias. I changed some of the curved lines to suit me, and picked out purple fabrics to sew together in random order - no pattern was given for the background. Then I quilted the background (I was still fairly new to free-motion quilting at that time). I don't usually follow a pattern. Designing is one of the favorite parts for me in the process of quilting. So, I had decided to change the pattern a bit. She had one leaf, and I'd put my touch on it by making 3 leaves. So, I pinned two pieces of the green fabric to the quilting background, and it sat on my couch in my studio for 10 years. I probably didn’t get back to it, because it wasn’t an original of my own, and I didn’t have that attachment to it.

My son, Alan, had been saying that everyone’s got a quilt but him. He really likes my quilts and he did go to Pennsylvania with me, so that I could see one of my quilts in a national quilt show. We had a LOT OF FUN on that trip, the ladies loved him, but that's a whole other story. So I decided he did need one, and to give him a quilt for Christmas. Well, Christmas was a week away, and I DIDN'T have time to design and make one, so I took the UFO that we did in Juanita’s workshop and finished it, mainly because he loves red and it was definitely that.

I took some white felt I had on hand, since I didn't have the stiffer material we used for the petunia, and sketched out two leaves that would fit in the two spaces in which I wanted them. I glued on the green fabric I had pinned to the background, removed the pins from the lower part of my petunia, and appliquéd the leaves down. I then appliquéd down the top part of the petunia, sewed down the seams with stitch in the ditch lines, and then quilted free-motion lines in the petunia top.

I repeated this process with the lower part of the petunia, thinking of Alan and how surprised he would be. I then hunted through my "stash" for a blue or purple fabric that I could use for binding, as I no longer had any of the background fabric left. I then bound the quilt, sewed on a sleeve, put a label on it and it was finished, ready to wrap. At 8:00 p.m. Dec. 20, 2017, it was finished and lying on sewing table.

(Additional info - While sewing on the binding, I got a call from Alan. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was sewing. "Sewing what?" he asked. I told him I was quilting. "Quilting what?" he asked. A quilt for competition I responded. And he let it drop. WHEW!! Then as we visit, he states that he'd like for me to bring some quilts at Christmas that he could hang up. I told him I'd see what I had that I didn't need for presentations, etc. Persistent little fella!)

I found that I liked the felt MUCH better than the stiff material we used in class, because the stiffer material tends to "bend" when folded and leave a crease that's difficult to iron out. I also prefer fabric on the back rather than felt. It's just a much prettier backing. New techniques learned.