In-Progress Garden Quilt

To be honest, I started with a strong bias against appliqué. It is so precise and perfect (italicized words should be said with notable distaste). I never imagined I would have appliquéd as much as I have. However, when I was spending a lot of time on my tuckus in school appliqué kept my hands busy and my mind less antsy.

In my early quilt frenzy I would go the library and rent 10-15 quilt related books each week, soaking up techniques, patterns and of course, beautiful beautiful quilts. I was unexpectedly inspired by Mary Lou Weidman's book Quilted Memories. All her appliqué is free-form, and sewn with abandon. As you might guess, I loved her "who cares what color thread you have!" approach.

So, class by class and block by block I worked on a quilty tribute to my beloved backyard garden, slugs and all. I had thought I would just stitch the randomly sized blocks together, but when I laid them out together they didn't cover enough space. I wanted a laying in the sun quilt, or a picnic worthy quilt. It had to be bigger. So I added borders last week using the fabrics from other squares in the quilt. I'm not sure the layout above is the most perfect layout a person could come up with, but I am certain that I need to get over it and stitch 'em together already so I can enjoy the quilt this summer!

I will show some of my favorite blocks in close up detail when it is quilted. But I thought it looked so happy laid out that I had to share this part early...