"Spices" Reveal: Saffron

For the "Spices" prompt, I wanted to do something floral. I couldn't figure out any other subject that wouldn't involve a line of jars. One idea was to do the flower vanilla comes from. It's a pretty flower. Here's one I found in the Openverse.

(Image credit: "vanilla flower - Goa, India" by She Paused 4 Thought 

is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

Pretty, huh? 

My other idea was the crocus flower where saffron originates. And I fell in love with this photograph, also from the Openverse.

(Image credit: "Saffron - Crocus sativus" by themts is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

I decided to use this photo to create my quilt. Before I could print it, I wanted to turn the background white. To print it as it's shown above would probably have used up all the black ink in my printer cartridge. They're kind of expensive to replace, and so I turned the background white, and then printed it. This is the photo I was working from.

And then it was a matter of choosing colors and building the flowers on a teflon pressing sheet. 

Day by day...

by day...

until the flowers were finished.

I decided to stick with the black background as it appeared in the original photo. When it was fused to the background, it looked like this:

Since I didn't have a border fabric I liked, I went on a shopping excursion to find the one I used. I'm not sure, but I think those are crocuses on the fabric. I gave it a dark purple stop border, and I liked that black in the corner just to break it up some.

From there, I went to work doing the thread painting for dimension and realism. It was hard to bring enough darkness to the flower center to give it depth. I ended up using both thread and a purple Sharpie paint pen to darken it up some. The thread painting was all done before adding the quilt back.

When that was finished, I added the back fabric and quilted it lightly with some crocus in the corner...at least, that what I was going for. Not sure if I was successful.

And then a leafy feather in the borders.

I used the same purple from the stop border for the binding, and my quilt was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back. I really like that fabric. Happily, I have a good amount of it left over to be used in another quilt.

It ends up at 23 x 20 inches, and I hope you like my quilt!