Heh!
Despite a day of fever taking me out of commission, running a 5k, and a drive to the coast for lunch I was finally able to catch up with my flower blocks for this quilt.
For the Trillium, Mary suggested using a “beautiful shade of red violet” with “petals of red & white striped”. Being that I had always assumed (yeah, I know…) that the trillium flowers were white on white, this was confusing to me. A quick inter-web search later and my pre-conceived notions had been corrected. They do come in white, but not only white. Looking at the pictures made it easy to choose the red violet. However, I did not like the look of any of my red & white striped fabrics with it. I did like the look of this polka dotted fabric for the petals. The center was a fun fussy cut bee on yellow background. :0)
The plan for the Tiger Lily was to used orange gingham. I KNEW there was several scraps of this in the hoard stash. I must have imagined having anything like that, because no matter how hard I looked, there was none to be found. Cornelia used “calico spotted with tiny bits of carmine or red”. In the stash there were two orange fabrics with white spots. It was a nice touch that the spots were of different sizes. For some reason the order of operations for this block was off, again and again. I first sewed down the small stem, only to have to cut out some of the stitches to place the long stem and the bud. I was clever enough to leave a small opening for the larger blossom before finishing sewing down the larger stem. Only to have to turn around and cut out the stitches from the tip of the center petal to be able to place the largest leaf. But all of that was ok, because I had put the smallest leaf on completely at the wrong angle, which made it point in the wrong direction. It had to be completely removed, repositioned and re-sewn down. It would be really boring if every thing went as to plan… (wait, there was supposed to be a plan?)
Edna’s Japanese Balloon Flower was deep blue and white striped. I am a sucker for stripes (and polka dots). To my surprise, I only had one piece of blue and white fabric in my stash. Guess what I chose for my balloon flower. 😉 In the line drawing of the flower, the stripes on the individual petals radiated out from the center. If I had cut the flower as the article suggested (as one whole flower) then the stripes wouldn’t radiate from the center. That would never do! I had to cut and sew each of the flower petals separately. I still have to complete the embroidery, but I’m pleased with how it has turned out so far.
Shooting Star was Sally’s block. She chose figured lavender with vivid yellow centers. Normally I would have chosen a solid yellow for the centers, but I really liked this yellow with the tiny little bee on it. It might have looked better with a solid, but the bees please me. 🙂
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