Tricia and Pearl's garden

What a crazy year! In the past month and a half I have a new grand son and my youngest was married in a small ceremony. With Covid we had to completely change my daughters wedding to a small ceremony with only some of our family. Amazingly my son, his wife and our three  grand children were able to make it east for three weeks. I was trying to figure out how to create my garden when they were here. I decided to have my grand daughter, Pearl help me.

I created the background with clouds, grass and machine quilted it. I had several pieces of fabric with fusibles on the back. Pearl picked pieces and created flowers. We ran out of time. I will machine stitch our garden next week and post it with the stitching. It was so wonderful being able to play with fabric with my grand daughter.

Andrea's Garden Quilt

Old Garden Beach Memories

11" x  14

Fabric paint, hand cut stencils, 100% cotton.

Well, here is my Garden quilt, wrinkles and all!

I'm really pleased with the concept and design of this quilt, but absolutely hate the wrinkled background.  I've been trying to use less fusibles in my quilt construction, but that was a big mistake for this particular quilt.  Thursday morning I was going to start it all over again, but then realized I could end up with two unfinished quilts on July 31st., so I just "let it go" and continued to work on this one. 

When I first started to think about this theme, I was planning on making something based on a purple clematis plant in my garden, but when I was not motivated to start I decided that I needed a different approach.  I really don't know what made me think of this, but the idea literally came to me while showering about two weeks ago. I really enjoy designing and making quilts based on something personal.  

My childhood summers were spent in Rockport, a small town on the Massachusetts coast, about an hour north of Boston.  A few times during the summer we would walk to "Old Garden Beach" which was maybe a mile from my family's cottage.  Every house or cottage along the way had some type of garden, big or small.  I think these walks were my first introduction to gardens and specific flowers, especially those that are more commonly found near the ocean, such as beach roses ( Rosa Rugosa ) and hollyhocks. I really wanted to make something that reminded me of those very special childhood memories of hearing ocean waves crashing, salty air and beautiful gardens.

I spent many hours experimenting and agonizing over the "perfect" background.  I tried both paint and hand dyed fabric, but nothing was quite right.  After much frustration, I re-evaluated just what I wanted to emphasize and realized it was the flowers and Old Garden Beach sign ( which I believe was much smaller and more rustic when I was a kid ).  I then gave myself permission to just indicate with white on white, the sky, water, sailboats and grass, in order for the flowers to "pop".  I was really  pleased with both that decision and how it was looking until it started to wrinkle.

The fabric paint used was either applied using hand cut stencils or sponge.  A few french knots were added to attach the flower blossoms.

Old Garden Beach

Rockport, MA.

July, 2020

Field of Poppies

The theme word Garden conjures up all kinds of memories. I think I am getting old because everything seems to be tied to memories now.

I lived on a farm part of my younger years and garden was a source of food. My mother loved flowers, but never really had a flower garden. I remember trips to Natchez and to the Gulf Coast and admiring the beautiful azaleas. When we went to France, we were astonished by the beautiful poppies that grow as wildflowers.

Poppies are always associated with remembering people. They are also easier to quilt than hydrangeas which may be my favorite flowers.

My quilt has poppies I made from a silk scarf. The background fabric is one of the Stonehenge cottons. I painted on it with Inktense Blocks and thread sketched the petals and stems. The large poppy is three dimensional.

Nedra's Garden - Chihulys Paintbrushes

Several years ago there was a Chihuly exhibit at the Botanical Gardens in Atlanta.  Having been a fan for many years, I drove 4 hours to meet a relative to see the exhibit.  The displays were fantastic as I expected!!!  One of them included the gondola filled with glass balls which was fashioned into a stunning quilt by Melissa Sobotka several years ago.   I took many pictures but none of them really did justice to the pieces and their settings - I purchased the book to remember them as they really were!!

The background is composed of a batik print as a base with rectangles of dark batik fused  and then stitched on top.  The glass paintbrushes are made of batiks also which are machine stitched onto the background.   Simple curved stitching using a turquoise rayon thread and glass beads were used to add texture and contrast.  The colors are a bit washed out in the photo -- the stems are greener than they appear  The piece is 11 X 14.  

Of course my pictures from Atlanta came out terribly so I've included a link with a slideshow of the exhibit.  You'll see how stunning the Fern Dell Paintbrushes were in their natural beauty.

https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2016/04/28/chihuly-in-the-garden-returns-to-atlanta-slideshow.html#g/364082/12

Alice's Garden Quilt--A Collage of Kaffe's Flowers

When I was straightening up the Elfa drawers that hold my stash, I went through my “purple” drawer.  Tucked into the bottom of it was a piece of sun-printed fabric that didn’t look familiar to me. When did I make this?  Then I remembered that I’d demonstrated sun printing at our MM retreat in Arkansas several years ago.  I went to the blog to look at the pictures I’d posted for that wonderful retreat.  Lo and behold, there I saw a photo of myself working on this exact fabric!  (I've included that photo below.)

I had decided to do a sort of collage of flower cutouts from my Kaffe Fassett fabrics, so next I sorted through that drawer.  Most of his florals are huge, really too big for such a small quilt.  But I found a few that would work.

I cut small sections of my chosen fabrics and applied a fusible product to their backs.  Then I cut around the flower motifs and arranged each on a square of the sun-printed fabric.  I used a fusible product that I have only occasionally used--Steam a Seam--but this proved to be a good choice.  Because it is “repositionable,” you can easily rearrange the appliqué shapes; they stick to the background but aren’t permanently adhered until you iron them down.  I arranged the appliqués such that some of the sun-printed flowers can be seen.

I bound it with more of the sun-printed fabric, and I quilted very simply with echo-quilting around the motifs.

This is the second Garden quilt I made!  My first one was a stringed pieced design, again using florals that were chiefly shades of purple, and it turned out all right, but somehow I wasn’t happy with it.  But it was already made, and so now it has become the back of my quilt.  So as I’ve done before on occasion, mine is a two-sided quilt! Below is the back of my quilt.  If I'd used this one, I'd have named it "String Pieced Garden Flowers."  

And here I am working on that sun-printed fabric: