grandmother's wildflowers

The baby hexies are finished! I know I said I would post this well over a month ago. Lets just say I severely underestimated the time it would take, and the time I would have available, to finish it.

"Grandmother's Wildflowers" is a take on the traditional grandmother's flower garden quilt pattern. While the technique and all the handwork I did was traditional, the open spaces aren't. I was inspired by a quilt in "Pretty Little Quilts" that had individual hexagons missing allowing the wall to show through.

I have one of my fellow quilting friends here in town to thank for the arrangement. I played back and forth with several ideas, even several different layouts, when Kathy sat down and began moving them in more of a color order arrangement. Bingo! A few minutes later I had them grouped the way I liked. I debated a bit about whether I should add a few more, but decided I'd stick with what I had.

All of these hexies are vintage fabrics that were precut and strung by an anonymous quilter years ago. Like the rest of us, she seems to have had a few UFO's in her stash. I bought them at the garage sale and can now consider them vintage project number 2 that's been completed from that huge find. (The first was the string quilt blocks.)

Every stitch in this mini quilt was done by hand - from basting the hexagons over paper, to the stitches joining the backing to the top. The back is a vintage feedsack. I would not use a feedsack again for a project of this type. The weave is too loose and I had to put in twice as many stitches to secure every loose thread in the weave as I finished the project. The quilt is tied in the center of each hexagon with matching embroidery floss.

And here's a quick shot of my next vintage UFO. More handwork, so it'll be a long time before I can post a finished quilt for this one. I have twelve of these dresden plates to applique to blocks. The long drive to New Hampshire a few weeks ago took care of 3 of them.

Step by step...