Baltimore Garden Block One!

And so it begins, my journey making Baltimore Garden.  This week I made the blanket stitch flowers and appliqued the stems and leaves for block one which is A1 in the pattern and called Dorothy's Double Roses.
I love the contrast of red and green to the off white. This quilt was originally made in 1848, the original maker is unknown, however the initials M.E.C. were cross-stitched into one block. It is not known whether they are the maker's initials or the recipients.
This quilt was also made after traditional red and green quilts were popular and before Baltimore Album quilts became popular.
I am amazed that women back then could come up with such wonderful designs. They did not have all the tools that designers use today, just amazing!
Being a gardener, I can understand how they would be inspired by the beauty of nature to make something beautiful to show case in their home and enjoy year round.
So I will be enjoying today, as the ladies back in the mid seventeenth century, blanket stitching my flowers on block one, and of course I will be stopping over at Kathy's Quilts to see what others are slow stitching today!

Baltimore Garden

Spring has arrived and my yard has kept me busy the last couple of weeks. I have been stitching a few klosjes in the evenings and finished a couple of miniatures for the wall.  But, soon summer will arrive and I find it too warm in the summer to quilt. So during the summer, I usually do some machine piecing or work on an applique project.  This year I am starting Baltimore Garden. The pattern is by Barbara Burnham and is a reproduction of MEC 1848, an antique quilt that came from an estate in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I will be sticking with tradition and using red and green and yellow fabrics.

The quilt is made up of twenty five blocks and a double swag border, so this one will take awhile.  I quilt for me, so there is no deadline or goal, just enjoying the process and hopefully ending up with a gorgeous quilt.

 

A new favorite quilting tool

Yes my new favorite quilting tool is the Stanley tape measure.  I follow Tim over at Tim Quilts. He is constantly amazing me with his talent.  I also love that he does it the Tim way.  For those of you that follow him, you know what I am talking about. I have seen several posts were he is using the Stanley tape measure.   I was cutting background and borders for my new project and decided to give it a try.  Now I realize why my husband hides this in the tool box in the garage or has one clipped to his belt. What a fantastic help, when it came to measuring long lengths, and it has this wonderful lock, so you can adjust it to the length you need.  Thank you Tim for opening my eyes and helping me look at things a bit differently.  Now if only some of that wonderful creativity and artistic talent could rub off and come my way! LOL

 

Mini Wall Update

 I finished the second miniature for my wall this week. I won this pattern and decided to hand piece the stars. The stars went together easily and I can't imagine stitching them by machine. But, I ran into some difficulty when I was adding the background.  After a few attempts,  I came to the conclusion that something had to be wrong with the pattern. I was right, and things went together quite nicely once we jumped that hurdle

I have blogged about my mini wall here, it's been a while so I thought I would share a new pic. The wall is not full and there is still a lot of room for more minis, but I have made some progress. I love the variety and they are a great inspiration to me while I sew.

Finishing Stitches

Another week has come and gone, and  the wonderful weather  outside has pulled me away from my quilting. I did get the garden planted and  weeded and mulched my azalea/ hosta bed. Hopefully, this week I can get my focus back and finish two miniatures.  I plan on slow stitching the binding  on my flying geese miniature tonight.
The other mini was complete until I noticed as I was hand quilting it that one of them seams an alternate block frayed and came loose. I ended up removing the hand quilting in it and replacing the block. So, there will be more slow stitching as I applique  a new block into place and do the hand quilting. I have been trying to finish up projects since the beginning of the year so that I can start a new applique quilt.  I am starting to wonder if it will ever happen. Since I love to garden as much as I love to quilt, so this time of year the gardening always wins.  It won't be long, and summer heat and humidity will arrive and then hopefully I can spend hot summer afternoons working on my new applique project.