gardens and flowers et fini!

  my block for the gardens and flowers rr is done!



I finished it while on a trip to India and be for you ooh and ahh, we were there for my DDH's job and not in the garden spot of bangalore but a suburb. More about that at a later date.


My block needed to blend well with the other blocks I got back from the ladies in our group, which were stunning by the way!

So I wanted to do them justice.

I "borrowed" the climbing grapes from Elizabeth

And the cast on flowers from Renée.


Almost everyone had some sort of climbing rose and a spider.

I loved the birdbath in Elizabeth's block set and used that on mine.

Then added bee's around Persephone and beads around the lace at the bottom left.

Now all that's left is to put it together.

heritage rejigger

 wouldn't you know it, I remember to start taking pictures halfway through a project?

 I decided that he way I had this project in one solid piece separated by lace was NOT going to work.
so I pulled it apart and started to fool around with it.

there was too much color in it, to leave it the way it was. to confusing to the eye as there was no place to " rest" and too much to take in at once.

so I auditioned a bunch of colors for the background.

black seemed to work best and as the only black velvet I could find, had some stretch to it, I used a muslin backing on or it would have distorted the moment I hung it on a wall! 

this is my "orts bag"  I had to experiment with the cuts so the first 1/2 yard or so was sacrificed to the sewing gods.

once I got the positioning right, it was easy.

making it square

 though that top middle one kept mis behaving. I kept either, cutting it wrong or sewing the bevel the wrong way in.
I ended up pulling thread on it at least a half dozen times!
 so how many of you use your tile floor to square up a big piece?

I sure comes in handy when I can't do it by ruler alone!

 Taa-Daa!

Isn't it lovely!  Now, there is a place for your eye to rest.  Also each block has it's own showcase and by skewing the blocks, you give it some movement as it's not all static squares on top of squares.

just for giggles here I am trying to get the best picture.

when inspiration takes you, you sew in your nightie too don't you?