Petal Pop

I am back from my Blog Break and am very happy to finally reveal (or a Boast Post as my Hubby calls it) my Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge Quilt for January which is rather late due to at first waiting for white batting to arrive and then some other commitments. This is one quilt I was ready to pop a cork to celebrate this quilt because this UFO, like many of the others, has a story.

Back in October, 2018, I was inspired to make this quilt after seeing Rene’ Creates Happy Flower Blocks and thought I could easily die-cut hexies and squares from my many colorful scraps and it would be a great road trip project for our upcoming TRIP to Washington DC. This turned out to be just the right project for the wrong reason as it turned out I had fractured my left knee while walking to the Smithsonian Institute (now you understand why I capitalized the word trip) and this is what I was able to do while recovering during Pajamazon Days (wearing pajamas all day as my Hubby coined it).

After making seventy of these flowers, I appliqued them to various low volume prints in shades of gray and finished them in May of 2019 and have languished since then…maybe because of painful memories? 

I decided last year that I would add these blocks to my #6 for the 2021/22 Country Threads Dirty Dozen Challenge and this one would be a big project since I still needed to cut and sew sashing strips for the sixty-three blocks I decided to use for a seven by nine layout or 70”x90” size quilt.

I used two different black and white prints, one print for certain flower colors, so it was easy to alternate the blocks but not so easy on the eyes, right? The flimsy was finished way before the middle of January and because my backing was a white and gray print, I needed to order some white batting. Due to some shipping mishap and having to order it from another source which didn’t arrive until mid February, I was unable to quilt it until March 20th because of taxes and my studio reorganization which involved a new sewing table.

It is a good thing I waited until my studio was reorganized before the quilting began. I will admit that I was not looking forward to the quilting because of the size, ironing the top and backing and because I was not quite sure how I wanted to quilt it because I had some reservations about quilting over the appliquéd flowers. Once I realized that this quilt would probably be a future quilt for the darling granddaughter, I thought it would be best for stability from future washings that the flowers have some cross-hatch quilting. I was going to do wavy lines over the flowers so I wouldn’t have to mark straight lines but I remembered I purchased the ViviLux 3-in-1 Laser System several months ago which came in handy. This and my new sewing table from IKEA with the expandable leaf on the left side made the quilting a much easier task. (I am not affiliated with any of the products mentioned in this post).

Here’s a collage so you can see the straight and cross-hatch quilting in an Aurifl silver thread and the backing. The binding was one of the black prints from the sashing. As mentioned earlier in this post, Petal Pop measures 70”x 90” (approx., maybe a little bigger). 

Petal Pop was finished almost a week ago but as luck would have it, the weather was not co-operative for me to take a photo outside. We had to wait until our weekend trip to the GP House until a photo could be taken from my son’s porch next door. I didn’t want to boast post until I could include a proper photo and I think it was worth the wait even though the Master Quilt Holder had a hard time holding it because of the size and with the mild wind blowing.

Here’s another photo from the GP porch because I just love and am happy that Petal Pop is a Finally Finish. And I didn’t reinjure my knee again like I did with the Kaleidoscope Krosswalk Quilt  even though it would be understandable as I’m rubbing my left knee while writing this post. I was feeling a little bad that it was not finished in January because I was priding myself that my UFOs were finished in time up until this one. I stilll might be able to finish the one for March but….

The Supreme Co”mmm”ander in QAL is distracting me right now (this photo from Pinterest and what I just typed should give you a clue whom I’m writing about, please the red maple leaf should be a dead giveaway if not the squirrel). She’s asked me to do something which I just can’t refuse.

Finally, sorry for the long post heavy with the photo collages but one last one since that’s what you can do when you have the app. Sometimes I have been mentioning my darling granddaughter as long as I have been blogging which is now 5.5 years. Part of my March Gladness included celebrating her Fifth birthday or as I like to call it my Five Year Anniversary of being a Grandma. My time flies when you’re having fun.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT, TGIFF