A Proud Reveal

Yes, today I am proud to bring you a completed center panel for a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. Little did I think that something like this would ever come from my hands. 

What began with a curiosity about English Paper Piecing and related techniques has resulted in this. Almost exactly 10 years ago this was all totally new to me. After quilting friend Jan shared two of her incredibly impressive quilts, I fell into the EPP rabbit hole. 

That was in March 2015; by May 2015, I had bought a glue stick and made some hexies. I played around with Lucy Boston blocks and fussy cutting as well as hexie flowers. Some of those early flowers are in this quilt.

Dabbling in a new technique has resulted in a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. Never ever did I think it possible! My thought back then was that all this endless handwork was probably the most daunting quilting task one could ever undertake. 

I guess I have learned never to say never. 

My quilt has 9 rows of flowers with 9 flowers in each row for a total of 81 flowers. Above, it is spread out on the king-size bed, which gives a bit of perspective on its size. My final stitches taken on this were adding path hexies to fill gaps around the outer edges. See below for one such gap.

I wanted the white/neutral hexies (paths) to completely encircle the quilt so that the flowers would stand out better when a border is added. My plan is to applique the quilt edges onto a border fabric to square it all up.

All along this journey, I knew I would select a solid fabric from my stash. I also envisioned that I'd use green. Wouldn't you know - I had no green with sufficient yardage to make a border. I did find this purple, however, and the more I look at it, the more it grows on me. 

Have you any opinions?

I will close today with a few more shots of the finished quilt center. I can look at these flowers and show you ones that I made in the very early efforts; I can show you which fabrics were scraps of other quilts; I can tell you where I bought certain fabrics and which fabrics came from Grandma's remnants; I can tell you on which vacation certain ones were stitched. Such stories stitched into this! That's one of the beauties of quilting.

I've been eager to share this with the quilters who participate in Kathy's weekly Slow Stitching party. I invite you to click over there to see what all the other folks have in store for us this week. From cross stitch to crochet and applique to quilting, all the needle arts are represented.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne