‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’

The Brash Flower Garden quilt (or my self-challenge to make a large flower block every month) is more or less on track. It’s been a busy start to the year and here’s the recently completed March flower:

It’s a stylised magnolia, made as a reminder of the blossoming of the magnolia trees in the streets of London during March. What a magnificent and unexpected sight they were. I used chintz fabric (thanks Asta) and machine appliquéd the petals into place, then added the centre. The hand quilting and kantha-style stitching is what gives the flower a bit of depth.

close up views of the March magnolia

For the April flower I made a sunflower in futile solidarity with Ukraine. It still has to be quilted. I had made sunflower blocks to contribute to the raffle quilt made by my quilting group, the QUOGS, to raise funds for Ukraine, so I could copy my own pattern. (By the way, the draw takes place on 4 May. If you wish to take a ticket, here’s the link.)

I plan to quilt the sunflower block over this long weekend and am looking forward to some quiet stitching. Meanwhile, here’s a set of photographs to show how the flower was constructed with machine appliqué. I used the same process for the magnolia flower, which is to place the outside whorl of petals down first, and then work towards the centre. Then I pin it all carefully in place and then machine it down.

While I have your attention (hopefully!) here is the completed February flower. This one is very heavily stitched, mostly by hand.

I plan to make a flower a month during 2022. Each block is 50 cm square and the twelve blocks will make up a single-bed sized quilt. For the centre of each flower I am using the same fabric, an African design of dotted, bright circles. The backing for each block is plain white and I am using the quilt-as-you-go method. The intensive stitching is therefore making a pleasing flower pattern on the reverse side of each block. (If you notice any repetition from the first post I wrote on the proposed Brash Flower Garden, I apologise.)

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