Black Eyed Susan Commissioned Quilt Finish

Hi, I am very happy to share one of my first fully commissioned quilt finishes. After delivering my Patriotic Midnight Mystery quilt to our Aunt and Uncle’s Anniversary party, I was asked by their Son inlaw if I would be interesting in creating a special quilt for his Mom for Christmas. Of course I said Yes, as this entire family is very supportive of my quilting. I was given the suggestions of a theme of wild flowers like Black Eyed Susan or Wild Rose with palette of spring yellows, light  green and light gray as those are the colors in her home decor.

I will have to say that I get very lucky working on this commissioned quilt in that it was very easy to come up with a design they loved. I searched on Pinterest for Black Eyed Susan quilt blocks and the one design that stood out the most that I thought would be fun to make, I shared a photo of it with my cousins and they liked my choice. There was a tutorial on how to make a single block and I drew out the block in Electric Quilt 8 software and choose different fabric coloring options.

This is Black Eyed Susan by Wendy Russell. She has a website called Patchwork Square where she has numerous quilt block patterns.

The Black Eyed Susans will be made with 4 different yellow/gold prints, use 2 greens as leaves, a black tonal print as centers and have a white 1.5 inch border, light green 2.5 inch border and a 3.5 inch gray tonal print border. This makes a 88 inch quilt.

I purchased all my fabrics except the gray border fabric from Fabric dot com. They had the best price on Kona Cotton solids even beating JoAnn Fabrics sale at the time and I didn’t have to order an odd minimum amount of yardage. The gray border fabric was purchased from a shop on Etsy, apparently it must have been popular as it was the only place I could find online that had any left.

These are all the pieces cut for my queen size Black Eyed Susan quilt. There were 1325 pieces in this quilt.

Here is my first test block and have started sewing the small components of the blocks together. Anything that could be chain pieced was for ease and speed. The Black Eyed Susan block is not difficult in any way just has lots of pieces and many diagonal seams (flip and stitch to be sewn). I hand drew them all out for my accuracy.

Here are all the small components of the flower block sewn.

Here is a blown apart view of the assembly of the Black Eyed Susan block.

Here is all 25 flower blocks pieced and laid out awaiting being sewn into a top.

Here is the completed flimsy. The light colors of the borders isn’t easily seen on the hard wood flooring.

Here is a closeup of the corner of the quilt showing a more true showing of the colors of fabrics.

To quilt this quilt, I just did lots and lots of  straightline quilting. This quilt was so heavy. I used a lovely gray and white quarterfoil design printed king size sheet as backing. I ended up purchasing a complete king size set of sheets in order to use the flat sheet as the backing. I think the fitted sheet will work nicely as backing for another one of my quilt tops.

Here is another view of the completed Black Eyed Susan quilt. We finally had some sun appear the day I finished the quilt so it kind of just glows.

The final quilt stats for making this quilt that my cousins shared with their Mom.

Black Eyed Susan

A Commissioned Quilt Design created and quilted by Shelley Folkerts, The Carpenters Daughter who Quilts

Based on the Black Eyed Susan block by Wendy Russell of Patchwork Square

25  (15 inch) blocks

53 pieces per block

1325 pieces in quilt

24 diagonals per block

600 diagonals (stitch and flip) in quilt

200 blocks created from 3 triangles sewn together

55 seams per block and 36 seams to make quilt = 1435 seams

6300 inches of quilting

How’s that for some crazy quilty math??? I may not use Algebra in my quilts other than in making the Variegated Squares quilt I shared earlier this week. Creating the 600 diagonals was the most time consuming part of the quilt and I am very thankful that the directions for the block didn’t have them made as Half Square Triangles that then would have needed to be trimmed to size. I did a small amount of trimming to the blocks made from 3 triangles.

My Cousin’s Husband sent me a cute video of his Mom opening the quilt on Christmas morning. She loved it!

I really enjoyed working on this quilt. I am open to taking on more commissioned quilts in 2019. I have a cousin interested in maybe having a memory quilt made for their Mom from my Uncle’s shirts and another cousin interested in having a graduation quilt made from her son’s team jerseys. I plan on using Electric Quilt 8 to help me utilize what shirts they give me in the best way to create a quilt for them before I ever think of taking a  scissors or rotary cutter to their special shirts.

Thank you for stopping by my blog. I am now finally caught up with blogging about my quilts from 2018.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley