Bountiful Bouquet–It’s Done!

Oh finally, I hear you roar.

Believe me when I say I have not enjoyed this final step.  I have learned a very important lesson when offering a quilt on a quilting blog, do it all 100% before you even talk about posting it online.  It’s what I did with Calm Blue Ocean and that was seamless. 

Bountiful Bouquet, not so much.

But here she is.  I’m really pleased with the way the outer border looks.  If you’ve got very good eyes, you can see that some flowers are not in place – they fell off when I put the quilt on the design wall.  Are you hating Vliesofix as much as me at the moment?

For this step, we will need that big amount of cream fabric that I made you get in the first step.

I’ve cut my borders in one long piece however if you are being a little more frugal than me, just go ahead and join your lengths.  It’s totally up to you.

At the end of step nine, your quilt should have measured 60.5” x 45.5” once you sewed those smaller borders on.

From cream fabric, cut two (2) 9” x 60.5” borders and two (2) 9” x 62.5” borders.

BUT REMEMBER, ALWAYS MEASURE TWICE AND CUT ONCE!

Stitch a 60.5” border to either long side of quilt and press.

Stitch a 62.5” border to top and bottom of quilt and press.

Your finished quilt should now measure 77.5” x 62.5”.

Give your quilt a really good press.  Make a big cup of your chosen beverage and set aside some time to draw and cut, because this will take a while!

Click on link and download all six pages of your diagrams.

Have a good look at my quilt picture above.  I have made four basket of flowers, which I have centred in the corners of my quilt.  From each basket, there are two vines filled with flowers, a total of eight vines altogether.  Each vine is very much the same as each other.  Can you see that?

I decided not to draw the whole vine length because it would just have been reams and reams of paper for you to print and stick together. 

Now this step is entirely up to you.  It’s your quilt, it’s your flower garden, you do as you wish.  But if you want to copy mine, this is what I did. 

From vliesofix, trace the following:

Baskets – Trace Four

Centre Flowers – Trace Four in two different colour ways

Long Windy Stems – Trace Eight of one, and Eight of the other (their bendy bits face different directions, eight go one way, eight go the other)

Short Bendy Stems – Trace Eight of one, and Eight of the other (as with above, eight face one direction, eight face the other)

Small Stubby Stems – Trace Thirty Two

Leaves – Trace approximately 100

For all the foliage (leaves and stems) I used the same green. 

Four Petalled Flower – Trace Eight

Five Petalled Flower – Trace Eight

Large Violet – Trace Eight

Small Violet – Trace Eight

Daffodil – Trace Eight

Large Daisy – Trace Eight

Small Daisy – Trace Sixteen

Large Pansy – Trace Eight

Flower A – Trace Eight

Flower B – Trace Eight

Iron these onto colours of your choosing and cut them out.

Now, I found it most easiest to pick a corner, work with that and get it right, and then copy that corner all the way around.  WE DO NOT PRESS OUR FLOWERS IN PLACE UNTIL WE ARE TOTALLY HAPPY WITH THEIR SET OUT.

As most ironing boards aren’t the right size (when will they invent a huge rectangle one just for quilters?), I found I had to do this step in two stages.

Lay down your basket on the outer edge of the quilt.

Place the long windy stems in place, and where they will roughly join up, cover them with the large daisy flower.

Lay down the short bendy stems in place.

Lay down the small stubby stems in place.

Lay your assorted flowers in the right area, covering the end of the stems.  You’ll soon discover if you like their placement or not.  Just move them around till you’re happy with them.

Tuck the leaves under in any places where joins are showing, or where you think that it needs it.  Copy my placement if you like. 

The leaves and the smallest daisies are excellent for covering up stuff-ups.  If you have a join that you don’t like, stick a daisy and leaf over it, and you would never know!

When you are happy with the placement, STILL DON’T IRON.

You need to tuck the long windy stems on the other side of the basket, so that when you iron the bits you have just placed on, the ends of the stems will be neatly tucked under the basket.

So – when you’re happy with everything, press the first part of your corner in place, being careful in the basket area not to press too far along the final stem, because we need to add stuff UNDER this one.

Now, you should have one of your windy stems facing the other direction of the basket.  Continue on adding bits and pieces as before, being sure that you place the pieces in (roughly) the same area as on the other side.

When you’re happy with your placement, iron in place.

Continue all the way around your quilt, making sure you copy your placement from the previous corner.  Ensure you don’t run over half way here:

When complete, and you’re totally happy, give your design a really good press.  I find if you just give it a lick and a promise when placing, you can lift and move things if they are in the wrong spot.  This is handy.  But after everything is perfect, a really good press will ensure that you don’t lose bits off your quilt, like I did when I hung mine.

When you’re happy, use your embroidery threads to blanket stitch all the way around.

When totally complete, quilt as desired, and bind using your usual method.

I can tell you, this baby won’t be quilted for ages.  There’s a lot of sewing there!

And that’s the end of Bountiful Bouquet.  I do hope you enjoyed it, I admit I had a lot to learn but that’s all good, don’t you think?  We can never stop learning!

Please email me with any questions you have.  And thanks again so much for participating!  Send me a photo when you’re done!

Download Diagrams for outer border from here

Download instructions for outer border from here

An update, of sorts

A finish for you. 

A long time ago, I did the twenty five patches in the centre of the blocks to try and test my stitching accuracy.  Each one of those squares was cut at two inches, and I needed to be able to stitch an accurate quarter inch seam to ensure that my blocks were the right size.  I can say that part of it was a success.

The rest of the quilt – it’s a bit meh, to be honest.  I couldn’t find a nice way to sash it, to finish it off.  My finishing brain is a little bit broken at the moment.

I tried to make them the centre of stars.  That looked too busy.  I tried sewing the whole lot together in one big postage stamp quilt.  That looked like my scrap box had exploded.  I wasn’t happy with any of them.

So this is the way I have done it now.  It’s okay.  Nothing fabulous.  But I learned how to do the centre blocks the right size, and that was the most important thing of the whole quilt.

We should always be trying to improve our quilting, don’t you think?  I hope that I am continuing to do that.

It’s been a week (oh who am I kidding, it’s been a month!) of not getting stuff done.  Not getting housework done.  Not getting kids stuff done.  Not getting even close to quilting done.

Certainly not getting blog stuff done. 

It’s hard when it all piles up on top of you.  On days like today – cold, foggy, overcast – all I want to do is snuggle into the couch under a blanket and watch bad movies. 

But I can’t.  Sigh.  Woe is me.  Housework beckons.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Civil War Quilt–Log Cabin

I’m not sure why Barbara Brackman chose to make 8” blocks for her sampler quilt.  I find 8” is quite a difficult block to work with.  This one came together well enough, but I think the maths is so much easier on different sized blocks. 

It rained it’s head off last night.  Each time it rains, we lose our (very expensive) driveway off down the street, so biggest daughter and I spent ages shovelling it back up.  I’m not complaining one bit about the rain – given our very measly annual rate of rainfall it would be churlish of me to do so! 

But I’d love a nice, soft rain that lasts all day, rather than 20ml in ten minutes like last night.  Still, beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

Till tomorrow

Suzie

Autumn Leaves

You would not believe the amount of times I have made this wall hanging.  When we were in business, it was a kit/pattern that we designed ourselves.  It was hands down our most popular design.  We have made in so many colours, we’d hang it on the wall as a shop sample and someone would come in, admire it, and ask if they could buy it.  We always said yes.  Shop samples are like rabbits, they breed and breed.  Even today, all these years after we have left the shop, we have bags full of shop samples. 

This one is unquilted, therefore just a flimsy.  But as I work my way through the cupboard photographing all of them, I’m sure to find a quilted one. 

It’s only small, and it went really well as a table centre for a rectangular table.  I used to do the whole ‘pretty table’ thing.  Then I had children.  Now it’s covered in texta, bits are chipped out of it, someone has drawn a smiley face on it. 

I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Aww thanks, you guys….

Thankyou so much for your lovely comments on the Calm Blue Ocean reveal.  I’m tickled pink (or blue?) that you were so happy with it.  The quilt, my version of it, is exactly the way I had it in my head.  It’s not very often that it turns out quite so well.

So thanks again, and please keep watch for the next one.  There will definitely be a next one, I totally loved doing it.

As for Bountiful Bouquet – I know I haven’t posted the final entry yet, but I will.  It’s hanging over my head like a great, big quilt-sized anvil.  Rather than stress to much about it, I’ve decided to give myself July off and I’ll post it in the first week of August. 

I’m sorry that I didn’t stick to the schedule I’d hoped for.  As it was my first online quilt-sharing experience, I made a few mistakes and it’s taken me a little longer to get it out there to you.  So check back then and I’ll definitely be online for you.

There’s a whole heap involved in the posting of a quilt or a mystery quilt.  With the first one, the Bountiful Bouquet, I was only doing it a month in advance.  With the Calm Blue Ocean, I made the whole thing before I posted any of it.  That allowed for any hiccups, fabric disasters, sick children – you name it.  What with the children, the husband, the house – life well and truly got on top of me this past month and Bountiful Bouquet has suffered for it.

But one more posting to go and then it will be another thing crossed of my list!

Hope your weekend is going well.  This is Ballet Concert season for my first daughter, which means silly schedules to keep, hair to do, you name it.  I’d love to post a photo of her in her ballet costume.  Perhaps I will.

Anyway, till tomorrow,

Happy Quilting!

Suzie

Calm Blue Ocean–The Final Step!

Yes, it’s here!

Click here for the direct link

or

click here to take you to the mystery page.

I do hope you loved it as much as I loved it.  I’ll definitely do another one!

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Kookaburra

There is nothing quite so lovely as the sound of kookaburras laughing in the trees.  We don’t hear them very often, I guess because they don’t have much to say.  But when they do, it’s precious.  I always find myself standing still and listening. 

We are very blessed to have such wonderful birdlife close by.  I was outside this morning and the Murray Mapgies were singing their little song.  I wish I could share that with you but I’m not so technologically advanced. 

I used to work in a bank, that was situated right smack dab on the banks of the Murray River, surrounded by big gum trees.  A little kookaburra family lived nearby, and we would hear them often, chattering away. 

It has always been one of my favourite sounds.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Batik Triangles

Another quilt by you know who.  Not me.

I’m such a traditionalist, and she is such a non-conformist when it comes to quilting.  I would never in a million years have made this quilt, I’m not a lover of batiks and I don’t love triangles so much.  But I took out the quilt and took its photo, and I really love it now.  When I took its photo, the amount of life in it really shows through.  It’s a wonderful quilt, I think.

I took it out of the cupboard, and she saw me photographing it.  She said ‘Oh, I’d forgotten I’d even made that’. 

We have both made many, many quilts.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Civil War Quilt–Birds In The Air

Another one of Barbara Brackman’s Civil War Quilt.  This quilt needs fifty blocks and I think I’ve made ten or so.  I think I’m going to sash it the way that she suggests, with the triple sashing joining at a nine patch. 

I had to starch the stuffing out of it, as it was all done with triangles and I have always been a lazy quilter, so triangles are not my thing.  But it worked (kinda) and it measures the right size (kinda) and the points are all okay (kinda). 

So I think I’ll kinda keep going.

Till tomorrow

Suzie

Tumbler Flimsy

Did I show you this one already?  It’s very sweet, made with the Accuquilt tumbler die.  I would ideally like to have made it bigger, this one is only about twenty inches or so.  But as luck would have it, I didn’t have enough spots and stripes to finish the job.

The go cutter is a very handy thing to own, I must admit.  It takes so little time to cut things out.  Now I just need time to stitch.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie