At long last: a finished project!

Little by little I am moving forward with unfinished projects left on the back burner way too long.

Long before I moved from the city to the country (way back in 2012!) I had begun to play with new techniques. At one time I decided to try out painting on fabric, and used one of my favorite floral design patterns for this. This pattern was intended as a lap sized quilt, but I decided to reduce the size of the blocks for a small wall hanging. The pattern is “Stars in my Garden” and can be found in my online shop here.

As you can see, the “stars” in the name come from the corners where the sashing strips meet. In my version, however, I decided to go completely scrappy with the sashing strips, so the stars were never formed. So a quick change of names, and I have now finished the “Shabby Chic Garden.” Which refers to the use of these soft pastel and flowery fabrics, for lack of a more original name.

At first glance, this looks like traditional hand applique. But it’s not. It is actually hand painted. Quilting around the shapes makes them pop up and gives the impression of hand applique. I decided back then to try this technique because it seemed faster than actually cutting and sewing the pieces on. And, in theory… yes. Except that when I pulled out the painted blocks after all this time, they just felt flat. What to do, what to do? Something had to be added, and hand embroidery did the trick. And took forever.

Also, paper piecing isn’t really my cup of tea, but those PP sashings really do add some needed movement to the quilt. I spent hours and hours paper piecing those strips, determined to finish this quilt. All in all, between embroidering the blocks, paper piecing the sashing strips, quilting and finishing, it’s taken me about a month (in my free time) to finish this project.

I am, however, delighted with the results:

Will I try this again? Hmmm… the jury is still out, but it is pretty likely.