Swan Fantasy - This was my entry in the Quilting Arts/Bernina Stitch This On-line Challenge. I entered my quilt in June of 2010. The challenge was to create a quilt, with lots of stitching, based on a photograph of a swan with a nest of eggs. I have been making smaller projects this year, in order to try new techniques and practice my machine quilting. I had fun making this, I used fabrics I had hand-painted (one of the new techniques I am trying), the heart, circle and squares were cut out using my Go Fabric cutter. I used raw edge applique, and had fun, I used Roxanne's Glue Baste-it to glue down the fabric pieces to the cotton batting, and secured them with decorative stitching, and free motion machine quilting. The swan was created separately on a piece of batting, then cut out and sewn to the background of squares and hand painted fabric - this gave the 3-d look of trapunto. I drew my swan from the photo, then traced a pattern from the drawing on to Golden Quilting tracing paper. The idea for the headdress on the swan just popped into my head.