What a journey!

Bramble Blooms Pt 2 …. Update

This has truly been a journey. I am very thankful to Audrey for starting me on it as I am learning a lot. I have a question too, so if anyone cares to try and answer that would be great. Thank you to other students who are commenting on my progress because it is very encouraging. Unfortunately I can’t respond on Google for some reason and will have to wait until I see my son in a couple of weeks to help sort out whatever the problem is. I’m loving everyone else’s designs and ideas!

So, here is a pic of progress so far. I think you can immediately tell that I’m improving with each flower. The middle one was the first, then came the flower to the left, and I’ve sewn one petal for the flower on the right.

A close look at the blue petals will reveal a hare in four of the petals. I think there is a pheasant in one of the other petals (because I didn’t have five hares that I could fussy cut).  Hares and pheasants would definitely feature in a bramble patch!  These are cut from a bundle of fat eighths called ‘A Meadows Tale’ which features meadow flowers, birds and butterflies. I wanted to include fussy cut birds in the centrepiece but there simply wasn’t enough fabric.  I could have used butterflies but that would have meant another shade of blue, and I wanted a different colour.

I fell madly in love with the watermelon colour of one of the fat quarters that my son gave me for my birthday and couldn’t resist using that instead.  By the way, making this choice took an entire day during which I kept thinking, “Make up your mind.  You are wasting valuable daylight hours when you could be sewing!”

I drew all sorts of leaf shapes in various sizes and finally ended up with the one cut from the lime green polka dots. I will add vein details in the quilting but I actually like the way they look like a fancy plant pot. I might experiment with different fabrics but I’m kind of in love with the lime green.  I think I will hand quilt at least the centre panel of the quilt.

I’ve made several ‘rookie’ appliqué mistakes. For example, I wish I had made six petals rather than five as after sewing them down there is too big a gap between the bottom petals. But I’m not unpicking and redoing. I’m putting it down to experience. 

I also had to make the centre bigger to cover up the fact that I could not get the points on the petals to line up around the smaller centre and opted to cover them instead. In hindsight I wish I had persevered and got the points right.

Oh well. It’s all about learning. 

I copied Audrey’s example and cut off the flower stems about half an inch from the bottom of my centrepiece but the edges are raw.  Two will be covered by the leaf/pots, but I am wondering what to do with the middle stem.  Any ideas?

My stitching is very slow but I really hope to have this finished by the end of the week.