Dia de la Abby #46: Floral Skull Quilt Square

This week, I've been busy working on my quilt square for our Skull Quilt Project. It was inspired by my #12: Skull with Flowers.

I'll be adding more details to my quilt square, but it's close to being done. To create the skull, I cut out a skull shape from a flower print fabric and used free motion machine embroidery to sew it to the black fabric. I have a large fabric stash, but most of it is printed fabrics. To create fabric in the colors I needed for the yellow flower and leaves, I painted beige fabric with acrylic paint. This changes the color of the fabric, makes it stiffer and controls fraying. To make the red flowers sparkle, I used an extreme glitter acrylic paint. To cover the center of the yellow flower, I used black PVC, sequins and beads. To cover the center of the red flowers, I used sequins and beads.The pink flower and vines are made with ribbons. The butterfly is from a printed fabric. I cut around the butterfly and painted it with a clear matte acrylic varnish, to prevent fraying. The purple flowers at the top, are French knots made with embroidery floss. The reuse of materials and fabrics through out the piece, helps tie together the different elements. I am enjoying using some old skills for a great project.


If you would like to participate in The Skull-A-Day and Becky's Fund Quilt Project, please mail us your 12"x12" skull quilt square. I recommend using cotton as your base, just so when I sew the blocks together to make quilts, sewing will be easier for me and I won't melt any fabrics while ironing the seams. Please leave an inch unembellished boarder. This is also to make sewing and ironing easier. This means you will have a total of 10" x 10"of working space. If your piece is anything like mine or the other submissions, that does give you a lot of room to be creative. Thanks for participating. We all really appreciate it!

Send your finished skull quilt squares to:

Skull-A-Day

PO Box 73236

Richmond, VA 23235

On a note sent with the piece, please include:

Your name

Your city, state and/or country

Your email - I will email you when your block arrives

If you have any questions about the project, feel free to email me at abby@skulladay.com

The deadline for us to receive the skull blocks is Saturday, May 28, 2011. This is so we can sew the quilts in time Skull Appreciation Day. The quilts will be auctioned off at and after the June 4th event. Proceeds from these quilts will go to Becky's Fund, which is an organization that helps victims of domestic violence.

If you aren't the quilt square type person, or want something to do something a bit different for the event, make a piece of Mail Art. These will be on display at the event.



Every week in the 4.0 year, I will post my own Dia de la Abby posts as well as a tutorial with instructions on how I made my piece. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Need more of me than just a weekly dose, follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook.