New Quilt-Solar Flare

 I started this project over the Christmas holidays at my parents' place.  Originally my sister's family was supposed to join us so I didn't have a huge plan for a project to work on there, but unfortunately she wasn't able to come (coronavirus).  So at the last minute I grabbed a giant piece of my polyester stash and stuck it in the car.  I figured I would paint and quilt a new sandwich to use for an origami or sculptural quilt.  Once at my mother's, I folded it in half, got it wet and started painting.  I didn't have a specific plan, but I was going for solar flare or fire colors.  

I got it all quilted at my mom's, and had fun using a lot of bright colors and sparkly bobbin quilting threads.  I quilted it on her Janome, while my Janome was in the shop.  I'd just come off several months of fighting with my Janome and hardly being able to stitch at all (it's all fixed now luckily), but it was just wonderful to quilt so nice and smoothly on something.

After quilting, I took it home with me and it sat around for a little while.  I had other things to work on and I was pondering what shape to make with it.  I finally settled on this 3D flower origami shape, which I thought would be doable with my quilt.

I squared it up, rounded the corners, and finished the edges with couched yarn.

The best way I've found to make crisp folds (like you'd have in origami), is to cut the fabric and then zig-zag stitch along the cut line.  I've used that approach successfully in some smaller past pieces (like this one and this one).  I'd never done it on such a large area; it's hard to see but if you look at the paper model, the fold is along a curved line and goes all the way around the piece in two different places.  I worried if I cut it completely at the beginning I'd never get them back together in the right place without bunching.  You can't really pin since in this case I was stitching two abutted pieces of sandwich rather than two pieces of fabric on top of each other.  So I decided to jus cut a little at a time.  I'd cut one side then stitch it all up and then cut the next side and stitch it back up until I'd worked all the way around.  For seams that would be mountain folds (that would be visible from the top), I couched on yarn as I zig-zagged over the cut. 

that's what you see below, the fabric partly cut along the fold line and partly stitched back up. 

Come back later in the week to see the finished sculpted piece!