This is a charming block! I love the phlox flower, and remember it fondly from my paternal grandmother’s garden. What I don’t recall is the sent of the phlox flower. I will have to plant some in my yard, just to smell them.
Block #12 ~ The Phlox
Nancy asked the members of the quilt club whether they had ever walked in their gardens at the cool of day and caught the quiet fragrance of the phlox. There is just a faint sweetness that lets you know the phlox is blossoming.
For the flower in our quilt you may use your own judgment and scraps as to the best colors. I have seen pink and white phlox, white and purple, lavender, magenta, red, yellow. You might make each one of the four blossoms a different color, or you might keep them all the same.
I should think a small fast color print design in lavender and white or in pink and white would be attractive. Your choice depends, somewhat, upon the color you used for the zinnia.
Notice that the four blossoms are all cut from the same master pattern. The centre of each flower is embroidered with fast color embroidery cotton. Choose a rather dark color for this centre. The stem is made from bias tape. At least I think that is the easiest way to make it, for the edges are all turned in for you and being on the bias the stem will take curves easily. The leaves are of the same green as used in all the other leaves of the ten previous flowers.
That mention of “ten” called to the members’ minds the fact that they were starting on the last half of the quilt. In the finished quilt there will be twenty flower blocks or flowers with birds on the urns. The ten which have been given thus far are tulip, cactus, lily of the valley, wild rose, Canterbury bells, trillium, nasturtium, primrose, pansy and zinnia. Now the phlox makes the eleventh flower. There are nine more to come after this.
Each flower is placed in an urn and each flower has two birds admiring it. The urn makes the lower half of the diamond-shaped block and the flower and birds are appliqued on the upper triangle. This triangle is 12-1/2 by 12-1/2 by 17-1/2 inches before it is sewed into the quilt. The finished diamond is twelve by twelve.
After the club members had cut the pattern, with its accompanying directions, from the paper they made a light tracing of the flower on the upper triangle. Then they made a second tracing on the light-weight cardboard. The original was then put away for safekeeping in the Nancy Page quilt scrap book. Directions for this scrap book may be obtained by writing this paper.
The cardboard design was cut into its separate pieces and these were used as patterns. They were laid on the soft, fast color material of which the flower and leaves are to be made. In cutting, a quarter-inch allowance is made on all sides. This allowance is turned under, basted and pressed. Then the pieces are pinned in place on the triangle and sewed or appliqued with running, invisible hemming stitch. The block is then ready for its place in the fast developing and much admired quilt.
“Garden bouquet quilt, block #12, The phlox” Newspapers.com, Edmonton Journal, February 6, 1932, https://www.newspapers.com/article/edmonton-journal-garden-bouquet-quilt-b/162363092/
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