Circles and squares - oh this one was a challenge!

I was very excited when I saw this months theme of circles and squares, and prepared my brain for taking in all things round and curvy for inspiration.  Inspiration never struck and my sketchbook was looking very empty, until I sat myself down with the goal of just playing with shapes. 

I doodled and played with balance and scale, looked up cathedral window projects in pinterest, googled circles and squares which for some reason threw up lots of pastry buns, but nothing was making that lightbulb go off and I was starting to crave a cuppa and a chocolate croissant.

I remembered Leonardo daVinci's Vitruvian man, that shows the symmetry of the human body inside a circle, and started playing with circles inside squares and squares inside circles.  Eventually, I got something I was happy with and then I got stuck again.

I've noticed in these challenges that the greater challenge sometimes, when you have settled on an idea, is how to make it?  I thought  about needle turn applique or sew and turn inside out applique but eventually settled on raw edge applique using bondaweb.  

I realised, in the middle of making it, I should have used fabric mod podge as it doesnt fray and when you iron it, you can still move it, if you need to.  

The other thing I've learned with these challenges is my mind is often thinking of bed quilts when I'm brainstorming and sometimes the idea wants to a bigger piece.  I struggle with that; keeping it small so the project is manageable in the timeframe and fun to make, and not a burden that a bigger project would be.  This is what I think it could be made large: 

 But for this challenge I decied to make the one flower and chose the slanted stalk over the lollipop look of the straight one.  I thought it might look a bit contrived at such a jaunty angle but I think it works.  For some reason we all agreed on orange binding (feels a bit Irish Flag to me!).  I did suggest Fuchsia but Orange won out - probably the influece of Halloween colours being so prominent at this time of year.  

 So here you have it : a cirle and square inspired spring flower in the middle of Autumn!