Cactus Queen quilt

I'm almost done with my Laura Heine "Cactus Queen" quilt! I finished collaging fabrics today, and this weekend I'll quilt it. It's my first Laura Heine pattern and I'm already addicted.

The photo below is before I added some butterflies, another owl, a squirrel and more flowers. 

Here's the pattern. Notice how she quilted hers in a close grid so that she could catch every little piece of fabric in the stitching. I'm not sure how I want to quilt mine. I'd like something more organic than a grid, but I also want something that will be easy on my shoulder, which is still recovering. Free-motion would be too hard, I think.

In case you're not familiar with her technique, she backs her fabrics with Steam-A-Seam 2 before cutting out the appliqué shapes. Those are some of my fabrics, above. Then she arranges the shapes on a sheet of see-through light-weight fabric called Pattern Ease (which I ordered from her website) before fusing them down. 

You can see my piece in progress, with just the background and the base of the cactus. Then you go wild collaging flowers and other prints. I added some rickrack and other trims along the edges of the cactus pleats.

 

Here's a real one from my walk. It's called a barrel cactus, and it gets yellow fruit that look like little pineapples around its crown. No, it doesn't get pink and blue flowers like the quilted version!

Here are some more photos from the hike today. The weather was gorgeous -- sunny and about 70.

The normally dry washes were filled with running water from snow melt up higher in the Catalinas. I just waded through with my gym shoes on, but a lot of little kids were playing in the water while their parents watched from the shore. A beach in the desert!

The poppies are also popping! These are from my neighborhood walk yesterday. Spring is here in Tucson!!!

I've linked to 8-not-sew-good-habits-on-off-wall-friday.html in case you want to read about what other creative sewers have been up to this week.

Have a colorful day