Isn’t she a beaut? This is a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt that I’m finishing for a customer. It was hand pieced – and beautifully, I might add – by a family member of my customer way back when. And when I say way back when, I mean – I have no idea when this was made. Some of the fabrics look 1930s, but there are fabrics from much later, too. I’m no expert, though. Many of the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilts that I have seen do not have the diamond patches surrounding the flower motifs, as shown in the dark green fabric in this quilt. It is an exquisite detail that would have required even that much more work and accuracy. Whoever made this knew what she was doing!
I spent most of the late morning and all afternoon yesterday basting it. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I ran out of room on our kitchen floor. I took advantage of the expansive hard wood floors at my in-laws’ house to stretch it out and get basted while my kids spent time with their grandpa. When I first measured the length of the quilt, I came up with 104″, but the 108″ wide backing fabric I bought for it wasn’t long enough. So, either the back wasn’t 108″, it shrunk, or I didn’t measure correctly the first time around.
I had a canister with lots of safety pins for basting and going into it I thought I might not have enough so I bought an extra pack of 150 pins at the quilt shop. I ran out of those, too, and calculated I would need 3 more packs of 150 to finish the job. Yep, an extra 600 pins total and I barely had enough to finish, but I did. Did I mention it’s times like these when I wish I had a long arm? Over 4 hours of basting time on my hands and knees? Yikes.
I’ll leave you with a few close-ups of my favorite “flowers”:
this is so beautiful. i love it
OMG Jessie that is gonna be a BEAUTY!!!! i can’t WAIT to see you work your magic on it and see it in person! I know you’ll do an AWESOME job on it and she will LOVE IT!!!!!! wow..thats a lot of pins!!!! do you always use pins? have you ever basted with thread? just curious…
Oh, I sure hope so! I like how it’s starting out now that I have a little bit of quilting done. To answer your question, Lisa, I always use pins. The only time I’ve thread basted was when I hand quilted – and that was a very small piece. You’ve given me a great topic to post about in the future – the process of basting. :)
VERY pretty, and I really like the green diamonds, makes it that much more unique. What an honor that they choose you to quilt it, they were smart and won’t have any regrets. Lots of pins, but not like they won’t get used. Did you enter anything in the fair?
Jessie this is so pretty. I am very familiar with this pattern because Grandma Estelle had several quilts with this pattern. I have one. I think you are right about the dating of this pattern, in the 30′s. What are you using for a backing, colored, plain or patterned?
Basting is a killer, if patience is not one of your virtues. Six hundred pins…I quiver at the thought!!
[...] jump forward with me to that Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt I’m working on now, remember? Well, almost all of the traditional Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilts that I’ve [...]
[...] diligently plugging away at the quilting of the grandmother’s flower garden quilt. It’s taking a long time – it’s a big quilt, but I’ll be done soon. [...]
[...] have started the next quilt project on my customer list. I’m still not done with the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt; I am done with the quilting, though, a that’s a relief, it took a loooong time. [...]
[...] Full view [...]
[...] Full view [...]
[...] I have started the next quilt project on my customer list. I’m still not done with the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt; I am done with the quilting, though, a that’s a relief, it took a loooong time. [...]
[...] jump forward with me to that Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt I’m working on now, remember? Well, almost all of the traditional Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilts that I’ve [...]