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Monday, January 12, 2009

Grandmother's Flower Garden




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:

  1. 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...

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  2. 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.

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  3. 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.

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  4. what a beautiful quilt! I admire your perserverance.

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  5. The quilt is beautiful! I love this pattern and wish you tons of fun this year putting it together.

    Hugs ~
    Heidi

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  6. That is the most beautiful quilt I have ever seen. So colorful and simple. I love it.

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  7. 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?

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  8. 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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