Grandmother's Flower Garden

There are three different indoor flea markets on this one stretch of road between my hometown and the next town north of us. I cruise through them on occasion and one time (in Itchy's Flea Market; I always thought the next one down the road should be Scratchy's Flea Market) but I digress. Anyway. You know those plastic bags with handles that a purchased blanket comes in? I found one of those bags with these flower blocks and scraps to make more in one of the booths. It was $32.00. Of course, it went home with me.

And when I got home and was emptying out the bag to fondle my loot there were more goodies! There was a thimble, a pair of stork scissors, needle and thread and, really the best of all, was the sandpaper pattern piece. I made more flowers. And more flowers. And then I put it together and started to quilt. I had no idea what type of quilting pattern to use so I quilted 1/4 inch inside each hexagon. Yes, you read that right! I quilted this one by hand for 4 years.

It's hard to see, but on the edge I added a round of white hexagons all the way around the outside edge like a border and then I trimmed it down so I could do a scalloped edge. By the time I got to putting on the binding, I was getting mighty sick of looking at the thing. I made half blocks for the top and bottom: not a whole block cut in half, but individual half blocks. Can you see the one color that is kind of rare in a quilt like this? Yes, it's the black. I had never seen black used in a GFG. The unknown quiltmaker's fabric dates from the 1960s. My additions date from the 1970's. This was my first Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.

My second GFG quilt was an incomplete top that I inherited from my fraternal Grandmother. She was hand piecing this into a top toward the end when her eyesight was failing. The flowers were made at another time in her life and she was using an ugly, coarse utility muslin to set the flowers together. And because her sight was failing she didn't see the gaps and puckers in her seams. I carefully removed the flowers from that hideous muslin

When I tried a layout, I realized that there weren't enough flowers. But that wasn't really a problem because I had that sandpaper pattern (remember that pattern?) from the first quilt that was miraculously the same size! And I had Grandma's Scrap Bag. I made three more blocks. I knew I wanted to do something a bit different than the first GFG, so I searched and found some English Paper Piecing diamonds. And then I found some of 'that green' original fabric from the 1930's at a quilt show -- I bought the whole thing of 36"wide by 1 yard.

Once I had the diamonds made and the central portion together, I knew it needed borders. I used the same white from the flowers and cut extremely wide strips and appliquéd the central portion onto them. I used up the rest of that green for the vine. In fact, I ran out. The butterflies are covering the sections where the vines don't meet up! Leaves are again from Grandma's scrap bag. Remembering how long it took me to hand quilt the other one, I quilting the flowers in this one differently: I went around each row of the flower so that each flower is quilted with three rows of quilting. The border is diagonal quilting. This is my second GFG quilt.

I have a third one that is in my UFO box. I'm a sucker for 1930's orphans, what can I say?