Red Vase quilt in the works

I'm working on my third flower vase quilt, and this time I'm using RED, a color I hardly ever use because it's so intense. I thought it would be good to stretch my wings a little.

Since most of the flowers are printed with black outlines, I'm free-motion quilting in loose, scribbly black lines. I used to hate doing free-motion quilting until my friend Sherry insisted that I try it with her quilting gloves. That was a game changer and now I love doing it!

I'm using black thread in the bobbin so that you can see the flowers and vase on the back. I think I'll do the background quilting with red in the bobbin so that it doesn't distract from the flowers.

Here's the back and the front of the cocktails. I'm using the fancy drink fabric for the simple reason that its colors go with the flowers and will make it look like happy hour.

The first step was to cut out flowers and stick them to one side of Steam-a-Seam 2. Then I cut them out and auditioned them with a variety of vase and background fabrics. I never dawdle over these decisions -- because dawdling's not fun. 

I'm linking here to Nina-Marie's blog in case you want to see what other quilt artists are up to this week:  /

Have a colorful day