Garden Party

I had great plans while I was vacationing to work on my Grandmothers Flower Garden Quilt. But this didn’t happen. I never thought I would ever be interested in making a hexagon quilt. In all honesty I have never been attracted to them and it seemed like a whole bunch of endless hand work. But here I am working away on mine.
Our guild has a fabulous retreat each year with a ton of classes that are based on that year’s theme. Last years theme was “Garden Party”. One of the classes offered was English paper piecing. I don’t know what possessed me to even go into the classroom, I think it was because they had been supplied free kits from a shop for a paper pieced pin cushion and I wanted to get the kit. I went back to my sewing machine where I was working on my batik mystery quilt and cut the hexagons from one of my batiks and before I knew it I had a flower hand pieced. I actually enjoyed the process and liked how it turned out with the batik fabric.
I am not big on batiks or bright fabrics. I had taken a class last year from Jan Krentz and had purchased a lot of different batiks for this class. I had decided to use up the leftovers in the mystery quilt but that didn’t even begin to dwindle my stash. So with that in mind I started cutting the hexagons from my batiks and basting them to the papers. It has been a relaxing project. I don’t assume I will ever finish this quilt. I don’t work on it all that often, but when I do work on it I enjoy it. They are nice to carry along to ballgames or in the car because you can fit so much into a small baggie. I think it will be more a summertime project then a winter project. I have included a photo of a few of the flowers. I think they are a lot of fun!