Fairly Merry-Hannah's Garden quilt...

Mary created this quilt for a friend who lost her pet. What a great gift. I love the Sunflower burst your eyes are drawn to. I also love how the color values match their pet.  You can read more of the story here. What a great gift to a friend. Mary is a fabric lover and quilter. She blogs at FairlyMerry, cute name. Here are her quilt finishes, amazing! Be sure to visit her blog...

I promised some photos of Hannah's Sunflower Garden quilted.  I didn't get photos of the completed quilt before gifting it.  They kicking and yelling graciously let me have it back for a few days for photos.  The husband had asked me to make his wife a sunflower quilt and a reminder of their pet who had passed on.  He was going to pay me, but as I took almost an entire year to find my rhythm with this quilt, I decided to gift it instead of taking payment.  (they are friends, so it wasn't too much of a stretch)

The sun hitting the quilt just so made it look especially bright.  Sunflowers should be happy, bright, fun, and make you feel good inside. Somewhat like a quilt.

Some of the quilting is grid style, I like to use that for stability.  I used FMQ to make sunflower petals through the panel pieces of the sunflower.  I also made small sunflowers in the center of the lighter blocks, you can see them well on the back.  

For the back I used a sunflower batik, and I was just a tad short of having enough for the entire back.  But, I used that to my advantage for something I wanted to add at the bottom.

In the quilting I wanted to add a small outline of 'Hannah' who was the pet of this quilts new owner.  Hannah was ill and went on to heaven before her time.  I traced a photo of Hannah and stitched over the outline on the back of the quilt.  You can barely see her on the front - as if she is hiding in the garden.  They had wanted a reminder of Hannah, but I didn't want the quilt to be sad, and this way, I feel as if she is there if they want to see her, but not obvious.  She was a very handsome dog!  

Here is the photo I used:

Hannah 

I received a very nice note from the quilts happy home, that alone was enough to make me all warm and fuzzy feeling inside.  But as we had talked about Hannah when I gave her the quilt and she said how sad she still was.  I encouraged her to make a home for a new dog - as that is what kept me going last summer when I had to let go of my own old girl.  In her note she told me that she was inspired to move on from her sadness and will bring home two boxer puppies later this month.  I will need to remind her later, that I did NOT in anyway encourage her to get two!  

Black and white showing value in the quilt.