Wildflower Album: Applique and Embroidery Patterns

The next best thing to a meadow full of wildflowers is a home graced with quilted botanical designs. Choose your favorite wildflower to make a single applique or embroidered block for a pillow, a small wallhanging, or a medallion center for a larger piece. Add sashing and borders to create a variety of quilt sizes. Some blocks, such as Wild Ginger, have as few as 10 pieces; others, like Wild Lupine or Texas Bluebonnet, have as many as 91 pieces. Appliqued blocks can also be embellished with embroidery. Each of the 40 block designs has a full-sized pattern. Color notes for fabric selection, descriptions, and characteristics of each of the flowers from nature are included.

Before Bea started quilting in the mid 1980s, she was not familiar with quilting in any form. However, she had a background in home economics, and with three daughters, she became an experienced seamstress. She also studied weaving and oil and watercolor painting, and she earned a certificate from the Sogetsu School of flower arranging. After Bea started quilting, and especially doing applique, she discovered how the painting and flower-arranging media were interchangeable with quilting designs in color and form. Since the mid-1990s, she has concentrated on her own designs of flowers, both cultivated and wild, and has taught and lectured extensively for quilt guilds in Kansas and Missouri.