I made this Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt last year - or maybe it took me two years to make it - but I finished it last year and had it machine quilted by my friend Julie, in Idaho. She does fabulous work - and with just her home sewing machine - she amazes me.
I'll be making another one with the fabrics that I blogged about yesterday.
I have a graph paper printing program and print out sheets and sheets of hexagons - 39 to a page - 1 1/2" across from flat side to flat side - and cut them up.
I put them in a little tin, then when I have a lot of them cut out I use a washable glue stick and stick them to the back of the fabric.
Yellow for the centers, then a dark ring around that and finally a paler ring of the same color around that to make one flower. The flowers are joined with white hexagons -which I have to make by the zillions - or so it seems.
Being a bookkeeper in another life I always have to figure out how many pieces there are in a quilt. And in the GFG that I made last year there are 1,696 white hexagons, and 1,651 colored hexagons. That really seems daunting, so it is a good thing I love repetitious projects.
After I glue the hexagons to the fabric I cut them out - leaving a seam allowance and then fold that seam allowance to the back and baste it to the paper.
Then whip stitch the flowers together.
The start of one flower - with the papers still in the hexagons.
A little box full of pieces, some basted, some not.
I string the basted hexagons together in a stack, with 6 dark and then 6 light of the same color - purple and lavender for example - and those then wait to be whip stitched together into the quilt.
This will be a long term project - I'll post more pictures as I go along.
Happy Quilting
9 comments:
Your quilt is beautiful! I'd love to try one, but feel awfully intimidated by those numbers! I'm afraid it'll never get finished and I'm horrible at finishing projects. I do like handwork though and this is pretty portable. Maybe a tute; step by step would ease my fears about sewing those hexes together...I could make a table topper and at least get that done....hmmmm....getting brave....just maybe.....thanks for the inspiration...
That sounds a really useful programme that produces the hexagons. I've done a little (a very little!) patchwork of this kind and making the little templates is fiddly and time consuming. The Grandmothers Flower Garden design is very pretty.
Your GFG is so pretty and I too enjoy repetitive work like that. Its so nice to take when you have to just sit and wait - like a doctors office or boring meetings. I even take hand work to quilt guild meetings!
The flooding is just terrible. I am glad your home was not damaged and it is indeed sad to see all the flooding other places. I saw flooding up close and personal like that in Pennsylvania a couple summers ago when coming home from a vacation and it truely is a scary thing to be in the middle of.
what a beautiful quilt! I admire your perserverance.
The quilt is beautiful! I love this pattern and wish you tons of fun this year putting it together.
Hugs ~
Heidi
That is the most beautiful quilt I have ever seen. So colorful and simple. I love it.
Really neat! Super duper neat!
What a beautiful quilt! I am interested in knowing how your friend machine quilted it, though. I have a 1930's GFG top purchased at a flea market -- it is king sized and hand pieced but I only do machine work. I would like it long-arm quilted but am unsure how I'd like it quilted. I'm also thinking about tying it. Suggestions?
Beautiful quilt!! I am in the process of making one too so I know how much work it takes. How did you bind it? I am working with a group at our local Senior Center where a few others are making one too, but we don't know much about binding it.
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