How to Make a Garden of Eden Art Quilt

Keep the stitching to a minimum by fusing fabrics in this masterpiece for your wall.

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Materials Needed:

1/4-yard of medium rainbow cotton fabric
1/2-yard of rich rainbow cotton fabric
2 yards of fusible web
15-by-17-inch piece of cotton batting
15-by-17-inch piece of quilt backing fabric
thread for machine quilting

iron
decorative rotary cutter blade: wave, scallop or deckle
fine point black marker or lead pencil
scissors
sewing machine
needle appropriate for use with decorative threads

Fuse Cotton Fabrics

Fuse the cotton fabrics with fusible web, following the directions that came with the fusible web. Let the fabrics cool.

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Remove and Save Release Paper

Remove the release paper (attached to the fusible web) from the fabrics and save the paper in whole sheets. Note: Release paper can be reused multiple times.

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Cut Out Fabric

Center the batting on top of the backing fabric to make the quilt sandwich. Cut out an 8-by-16-inch rectangle from the medium rainbow fabric for the sky. Cut out a 7-by-16-inch rectangle from the red/orange section of the rich rainbow fabric for the ground.

Fuse the Sky Fabric

Place the sky fabric horizontally, glue side down, near the top edge of the 17-inch side of the batting. Fuse the fabric into place, holding an iron on the fabric for five seconds.

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Free Cut Grass Spikes

Free-cut 1-inch-wide, 1/2-inch deep grassy spikes along the 16-inch side of the ground fabric. Note: Free cutting is cutting fabric without measuring, using a pattern or drawing on the fabric.

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Create Background Collage

Place the ground fabric below the sky fabric and overlap the grassy spikes on the sky fabric to build the background collage. Fuse-tack into place as you did before.

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Cut Out Leaves of Grass

Cut out a 10-by-10-inch square of fabric from the green/yellow section of the rich rainbow fabric for the leaves of the grass. Using a decorative blade in the rotary cutter for added interest, free-cut the green/yellow fabric on the bias into leaves of grass measuring about 1/2-inch wide and tapering to a point. Cutting the fabric on the bias will allow it to curve as it's fused. Place a grass leaf vertically on top of the ground fabric, glue side down.

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Fuse the Grass Leaves

Place the iron on the wide end of the leaf and use it as an anchor as you iron up the leaf. Curve the leaf as you iron. Fuse-tack the remaining grass leaves to the ground fabric.

Add a Flower

Draw a large daisy-like flower with a fine-point marker or lead pencil on a piece of release paper. Place the drawing, ink side down, on the glue side of the fabric chosen for the daisy. Fuse-tack into place. After the fabric cools, remove the release paper from the fabric. The ink from the marker will have transferred to the glue on the fabric. Cut out the daisy just inside the black line of the marker with scissors. Place the daisy on the quilt top and fuse-tack it into place.

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Create the Center of the Flower

Free-cut a round circle for the center of the daisy from the fabric. Stack the circle on the daisy and fuse-tack it into place.

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Add More Flowers

Continue adding flowers to the quilt top. Make them with either the shape-shifting method from before or by free-cutting the fabric into flower shapes. You can also stack several layers of fabric when making them. When the composition is complete, steam-set the fabric into place for about 10 seconds.