Spider Iris Doodle

This is what I have been working on while I think about the borders for my spiral log cabin quilt. It is one of my doodles that I think looks like an iris, a spider iris (like a spider mum). Never heard of a spider iris, well here it is! 



Spider Iris ready for binding



 I enhanced the color a little to show the correct color of the iris but the background shows up with too much yellow; it is  more like a soft chartreuse. It is 12 x 12 and has a layer of batting and a layer of Timtex. I was winging it experimenting all the way with this one. I  I fused the flower and then layered the top with a layer of Warm and white batting and did the satin stitching and the French knots.

I didn't know if I liked it or not so I let it rest a few days. I decided that I liked it well enough to keep working on it and then I was afraid to mess it up with machine quilting. It is small so I decided I could do a little hand quilting with embroidery floss and "big stitch". I used 2 strands of purple and 1 strand of lavender to add a little something to the flower. I thought about switching to machine quilting at that point but decided to keep going with the hand stitching. For the first round of echo quilting I used 1 stand of darker green and 2 stands of chartreuse and then switched to 2 stands of chartreuse for the rest of the quilting. 

The back of the batting layer.



When I finished the echo quilting I layered it up with the Timtex and the chartreuse fabric for the backing and machine quilted to outline each petal. I used the same  thread as the satin stitching and stitched very very close to the satin stitching.  It took a long time; I was going v e r r r y slow but I think it looks good. Now it is all squared up and ready for the binding. I love that all the mess on the back of the batting layer is inside and will never show.

 Now that I like it I am once again worried that I will mess it up. We''ll see what  tomorrow brings.