My Scrappy Spring Garden (Project QUILTING - Season 9, Challenge 6)

The sixth and final challenge for Season 9 of Project QUILTING was "Scraptastic." I logged on to the Project QUILTING site from the hair salon on Sunday afternoon after the theme was announced.  I started planning my project while my color was processing. (I find that letting my mind wander while at the salon is relaxing and, as in this case, helpful.)

With plans to be out of town for four days last week, I knew I'd have to plan a project that could be finished with only a few days at the machine. The challenge required that we use at least twelve fabrics in our finished piece, so I had to take that into account, too.

I have a half-square triangle pattern that I've made several times and really like (see below). One of the smaller quilts has been hanging in our bedroom for a while and I'd been thinking that I might want to make a new wall hanging for the spring.

With the warmer weather, flowers were starting to poke their heads up through the ground--crocuses, bleeding hearts, bluebells--even the forsythia looked like they were ready to make an entrance. An idea popped into my head that I could choose a few colors to represent spring flowers--pink, yellow, orange, white, purple--and make scrappy HSTs with this pattern. In my mind, the quilt would represent my favorite spring flowers: lily of the valley, lilacs, and peonies, as well as the flowers that grace our yard early in the season: crocuses, forsythia, and bluebells.

On Sunday night, I put together eight squares with six different fabrics each, two squares of yellow, two purple, two yellow, one white, and one pink. The friend we were visiting is also a quilter, so I thought I might be able to pick up background fabric if (when) a trip to the fabric store was planned.

Happily, I did make a trip to Stitchcraft in Boca Raton, FL, and I found some lovely green fabrics for the background and binding. My friend and I planned a sewing session on Friday morning, and I was able to smash out all of the HSTs and lay out the top. Thanks to input (and some extra fabric from Chris), I was also able to create a few more scrappy HSTs in pink and white to fine tune the design, and assemble the top (without borders).

The view in Chris' sewing studio is far more attractive than that in my windowless basement sewing area in Brooklyn!

When I got home, I spent all day on Saturday adding borders and getting ready for quilting. Since I prefer to baste with thread, it's always a challenge to find empty floor space in our apartment. Happily, there's JUST enough space in the kitchen for a quilt this size.

I much prefer piecing to quilting (and I didn't have much time to be too creative with the quilting anyway), so I opted for straight line quilting with a variegated green thread.

I finished it off with a binding in fabric that reminds me of grass, finishing up the hand sewing on the binding as I watched this morning's episode of CBS Sunday Morning.

I call my finished piece, My Scrappy Spring Garden. Once I get the hanging sleeve attached, it will hang in our bedroom to welcome the spring flowers inside as well as out. I used a total of 64 fabrics (including the background, backing, and binding), so I more than met the requirement to use twelve fabrics. All of the "flower" fabrics came from the scrap bins of my friend and me.

My Scrappy Spring Garden
38.5" x 38.5"
Various cotton fabrics with cotton batting and thread