Saturday, March 10, 2018

My Whimsical Flower Garden quilt..blocks 1-7

Feb 24th, I sat down to start this quilt.  I spent 6 hours that day working on the first 3 blocks.  It was actually such a great moment of relaxation.  I have been going like crazy for a while now.  Between the last Sat in Jan and the 3rd sat in Feb I had a ballet performance that I was in as a pianist or worked or attended that occupied all my spare weekend moments.  Of course, I thoroughly love my professional job, so no complaints about spending hours performing, but it does wear a person out!  Then we spent the most wonderful 4 days at my in-laws over Presidents day weekend.  Honestly, we played lots and lots of card games and board games.  We only nearly a couple hundred games in our house, so we play a lot of games.  But, the first free weekend, I spent nearly the entire day at my sewing machine.  It was HEAVEN!!  The slowness of the weekend and the project were just wonderful. 

I still have a couple of these blocks that I am not fans of, so they might be changing, but here is the start. 

Block 1


Block 2
I went back and added the faint red stitch about the flowers afterwards on this block and I absolutely love it.  It really defines the petals.



Block 3
I just love the green on this one!! 


Block 4
I love how the middle flower turned out.  I love the fabric I found in my stash, I love the edging I did, I love the fussy cutting to get the purple smodges every other petal.  Oh and the greens just turned out soooo fun!!  I think that the palm tree leaves are kind of funny, but I am keeping with the exact pattern for that kind of stuff and it makes for something unique and fun.  


Block 5
I feel like I need to do some sort of color stitch of a different color around the bird, but can't decide what to do.


Block 6
I feel like I would like to add a red stitch line all the way around the edge of the orange flower and an orange one around the red flower. So, this block might still be a WIP.  

Block 7
I sewed this one yesterday.  I still haven't finished the bird. I need to stitch around it to hold it down.  However, I added it because it is all ironed on.  I really love the fun flowers that are opening on the bottom.  I also like that this is the first flower that I made without a print.  I think that will be a good to have that contrast in the quilt.  


Each block takes about 2 1/2-3 hours.  Between cutting each individual piece, ironing on some bonding, ironing them onto the block, stitching around the edges and adding the borders, it takes some time.  However, the first couple blocks I was only bonding on some steam a seam or such on the exact portion of the fabric i needed.  Then I realized that I would be using the same browns or some of the same green throughout and just bonded on a large section.  That made it start going much quicker because I could just grab something from the scraps pile that is growing.  

Its been the perfect project to work on because I have been in need of quiet a bit of thinking/meditating time with all the responsibilities in my current life.  I am over 1/3 through the 20 blocks but hope to be half way by the end of this week.  

Hope you enjoyed!!

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