'Celebrating Australia' series of quilts

I have been working on a series of 'Australia' quilts the past few months and I have them almost completed, except for hand stitching down the bindings.   The first Australia quilt I made was this one.

 I sewed lots of crazy 4 inch squares, joined them all together and then cut the outline of Australia and machine appliqued it onto the background fabric.

 This one is aptly named 'Australia Shape Up', a mix of different shapes of varying sizes machine appliqued onto the background fabric.

 The idea for this one came after a visit to Canberra.  I had a lot of smaller black and white fabric scraps left over from other projects and so I started drawing around a 20 cent piece onto the fabric and cutting out hundreds and hundreds of circles.  They were fused onto the background fabric to form the shape of Australia and Tasmania.

I then sewed 2 lines through all the rows of circles to hold them down.

 Here is the quilt ready for the background quilting to be done.

This quilt is made up of different countries that fit into the Australia shape.  Each country is a different colour and is fused onto the background fabric and machine appliqued in place.  

This quilt spells out all the States of Australia.  As well as outline quilting around all the letters, I have quilted the capitals of each State onto the background.  

This quilt is made up of different colours for the States and each section is foundation pieced using strips of scrap fabrics.  The background is foundation pieced using creams and whites.  

I could not pass the chance to make an 'Australia' quilt using some of my selvedge stash.  This one is made with the word selvedges and the background blues, whilst not selvedges, allowed me to use up some of my blue fabric scraps.

I was also given a bundle of indigenous fabric scraps and selvedges and these went into this quilt.  The background blue fabric is a gorgeous indigenous print, which I have quilted.  This is my favourite so far, although each quilt is unique in its making.

Here is a close up section of the background fabric showing how the quilting was done. 

I had collected bits and pieces of 'Australiana' fabric over the years and some of those pieces went into this 'fussy' fussy cut Eye Spy Australia quilt, with emphasis put on adding pictures to the quilt that applied to each State.  

I am now working on a much bigger Eye Spy Australia quilt, with not so much 'fussy' fussy cutting which allows me to use some bigger pieces of fabric.  The background blues were foundation pieced using the remaining blues scrap fabrics I have accumulated over the years.  

I am hoping to have all these quilts completed and ready for display in the lead up to Australia Day 2019.  

Happy Quilting,