Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Grandmother's Flower Garden...Also in Bloom




Here is a project I found when I was cleaning up my bedroom. There are UFOs all over our house. I find convenient places to stash them, and they are forgotten for years. This particular UFO is so old that I don't remember where I got the Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks. I really like the old-fashioned classic patterns. You know what I mean--the quilt patterns that everyone knows, whether they quilt or not.

I only had five blocks, and they are stained. In my limited experience, I have seen nearly all the stains on these era blocks come out perfectly. I got the idea of connecting them with a fabric that would match all of them. Hahahaha...more difficult than I would have thought. I ended up with the feedsack-type sewing print you see with the blue background. I added the hexagon-shaped blocks BY HAND all around then joined them together. That's the point at which it went into hiding again.

The irregular-shaped edge was one aspect I did not want to deal with. Binding that would be torture. So last week I hand-appliqued it to the vintage-looking cream in the pictures above. I basted about half of it and started hand-quilting it. Today I finished the basting (yellow thread) and have done more of the quilting.

It's ugly as sin. I particularly dislike the purple stripes in the ugliest block (the blue and black one--see the close-up picture if you can stomach it). I realize in retrospect that I should have put the ugliest block in the middle (where it would be hidden by our napkin basket on the table, LOL), but it's too late now.

I am using thread that matches the backgrounds of the fabric so that the stitches don't shout (since the whole runner does anyway!!). I love old (antique, vintage) blocks, and some of my favorite quilts are ones I made using someone else's beginnings and brought them to an end.

Stay tuned. I'm sure I'll be posting a finished picture in this decade.

~Joan

1 comment:

Audrey said...

It's lovely, Joan. Any GMFG I've seen in the past is kind of "ordinary". But I'm learning that nothing you do could possibly be classified "ordinary". It's so wonderfully crisp/sharp.