A pretty Flower Garden!

So many quilt-hopefuls fall by the wayside...hopefully to be brought back to the needle at some point.

Some quilts hold my attention until they are finally complete, and my Flower Garden quilt has been one of them.

I'm pretty sure it's been at least a two-year project and, as I'm sure I've said before, I've loved every bit of the journey of this quilt.

I knew a long time ago that I wanted to quilt this in a way inspired by Judi Madsen of Green Fairy Quilting. I had the opportunity to take classes from her in June 2015. She is a very precise quilter and her work is fabulous. It was great to see her in action and to see her quilts up close.

This is probably the most difficult quilting I've ever done, but so much fun at the same time. There are quite a few oopsies in the quilting, but with invisible thread and such dense quilting there was no way they were being picked out. For this reason, this is not going to be a "show-quality" quilt, but it will always make me smile to look at it! 

Like I always say, it's all about the journey and this one was a good one!

The sashing is made of 1.5" squares and was worth the effort!

I wish I could get a better picture of the texture on the back but here's the best I could do....

Again, I love the use of striped fabric for the binding...

Each block was fun and whimsical to applique and it was nice to re-visit each one as it was quilted....

I know that this kind of quilting will take a lot of practice to really get it right. I'll definitely do it again, probably not on a client's quilt but on my own quilts.

In my applique group there are many of my friends that are working on the same quilt, but in different fabric choices.

One is done in Fassett fabrics, also, but with a beautiful white background fabric that really makes the bright colours sparkle. Another is in batik fabrics, another in William Morris and yet another in her "stash" fabrics. So much fun to see them all done a little differently.

I've entered this quilt and my Moonlight Through the Trees quilt into the Norfolk County Fair and Horse Show. I'm on my way there today and am hoping the FlowerGarden quilt is hung so I can get a good picture of the whole thing. If not, I'll get it on my design wall when it comes home and take a picture.

I'm so happy I changed a few of the fabrics at the last minute...such as the cat...I like him so much better now!
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Later this same day....

So I've been to the Fair and it was so nice to see my quilt hanging so I could take it all in. I had ended up hearing in advance that my quilt had won a lovely ribbon....so nice to be recognised for what you love to do!....also secretly nice to stand back and eavesdrop on what the people say about one's quilt, lol.

To make it even more special was the fact that a long-time quilty friend of mine also won  for her quilt! Way to go Karen!!!

Now onto the next quilt! I wonder if I'll ever do another Kim McLean design. I've done two now and loved both of them! Maybe, we'll see....I'm kinda into Jen Kingwell lately. I do seem to like the Australian designers!

I came home to catch up on mowing the lawn....all of a sudden it's growing so fast after the rain we've had. A sure sign of lawn mowing is seen when a person has a white dog...

I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social.