Progress on Grandma’s Flower Garden Quilt seams to be moving along. The Fuchsia block was constructed the same as the Crocus block, by taping it to the window to correctly place the prepared pieces.
This block, like the first one, doesn’t have the handles. I still haven’t been able to get more of the basket colored fabric. Once more of the fabric has been obtained, it will be made into the 1/4″ bias tape needed to make the handles. Once the handles are on, then the two triangles, the flower and the basket, will be joined.
The plan is to keep all the leaves dark green and the stems light green, throughout the whole quilt. Then the flowers will be printed, on figured, fabrics.
When arriving at the 3rd block, the Rose, things needed to be changed up. It was especially difficult to get the fabric to fold smoothly around the small circle at the center of each rose. Did I forget to mention that there are four roses in this quilt? One for each corner of the quilt. The Lite Steam-A-Seam II was traced and cut out as before. The color suggestions in the article were as follows:
One member developed the rose in four shades of yellow, another chose four shades of pink, A third member chose pink, then apricot, a tawny yellow and last a circle of orange. The last rose shaded from a deep rose on the outside to pink, then blush pink, and finally a pale, pale pink, for the centre.
Edmonton Journal
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada15 Dec 1928, Sat • Page 37
After cutting out the pieces, they were placed in the four stacks. On each piece was written the color the fabric was to be.
Then came the fun of picking out the fabrics!
Up until this point it was easy to do these assembly line style. To keep from mixing up the flower layers, I did them one at a time. Ironing around all these curves was tricky, and I burned my finger tips several times before coming up with a different technique. Instead of ironing the fabric to shape around the paper, the paper was traced in small running stitches. This seemed to make it easier to fold the fabric over while maintaining the correct curves. I could also pull the running stitches to gather the edges slightly to help curve the fabric. Then it was just a matter of sticking them together, ironing them, and sewing the edges of each piece. I chose to sew the smallest piece first, working my way to that largest layer of the flower. This way, I would only be sewing the edge of the rose while attaching it to the triangle instead of 4 layers of fabric by the time I reached the small center piece. To sew the top layer to the next layer, the stitches went through both the fabric and the paper of the next layer. When it came time to peel off the paper from that layer to add that layer to the next layer down, the paper was easy to peel off on the perforation line of stitches. Another thing that was different from the previous 2 blocks was that with all the curves, the seam allowance didn’t stick as well. I had to fall back on my needle turn technique from the Hawaiian quilted pillow top.
Not all of the roses are completed, but nearly!
Remember the brown fabric used in the pieced basket blocks? I told you that it was “light camel”. when I went to order more, there were 3 different browns and “light camel” didn’t look like a correct match to what was already done. Not being sure, I ordered one yard of each of the browns: brown, dark brown, and light camel.
None of these colors were a perfect match
The brown is the closest, and that is before it is washed. I stood there a long while glaring at the above sight. I was thinking that I would have to start all the way over, cutting out all those brown pieces…
Then I realized that it isn’t such a big deal. All of the pieced blocks would be the same and all of the handles would be the same, just a little darker than the baskets. I’m better now.
