Bright flowers for a snowy May 17...

Watching it snow on May 17 gave me the urge to make some bright flowers! I had recently been given a bag of fabric scraps by a friend, which included several quilt blocks and pillow tops. I turned one of the pillow tops into 9 cards. I just cut out a rectangle, added a solid square, some quilting, and a thread sketched flower. I always cut my initial rectangle a bit large, so I can trim it to size and re-square it after all the stitching is done.
I wanted to do straight line quilting, but I don't have a walking foot, so I knew I had two other options. Using a regular straight stitch foot wasn't one of them, the fabric creeps too much. One option is to use the straight stitch foot, but put a piece of card stock under the edge of the foot and sew along next to it. This works great, but is a little tedious. The second option is to use a free motion foot, which is what I did. The foot doesn't press down on the fabric, so no creeping. The drawback here is that it's harder to make a straight line:-) Fortunately, if it's a bit wobbly it doesn't bother me:-) For really nice straight line quilting, there's really no substitute for a walking foot!
I also played around with some different methods of filling the petals, some straight lines and some squiggles, I think I like them both:-)

---