Friendship Flowers Finished! (First Finish)

Well, at least the top is finished, anyway. Quite a few years ago, my Amazing Quilt Babes stitch group exchanged flower blocks as our first project together. I haven't posted those quilts yet, but they are pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself. After that exchange, we wanted to do something else, so we came up with a few ideas that just didn't go anywhere. I can't remember how we landed on these blocks, but each of us shared a piece of focus fabric with the others (mine is the outside border fabric) for the colors we wanted. Then we each made a block for all the others from the same pattern, but different fabrics.

At the time we began, there were seven of us in the group. The first to leave the group was Deb, and her background was black and she wanted red flowers. Of course, I had already completed her block before she left, but she had not started any of ours. The last person to leave the group was MaryKay. Her block for me is the pink peony block in the lower right hand corner, and it was not really completed by her, but rather a friend of hers (that we knew). That kind of took the pizazz out of the project, to tell you the truth, and the blocks just languished in my project box. I didn't even do my own daffodil block.

Then a few months ago, I pulled out my Sharyn Craig book on 7 Spectacular Setting Solutions (mentioned before in my blog postings), and I started putting this quilt top together. I got as far as the blocks set on point, and then I realized I had extra "paths" fabric leftover. What did I do? Seems I left off the outside paths of the blocks. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do? Put it aside, of course!

After I did the Windblown Wildflowers little quilt top (posted April 26), I thought of my Friendship Flowers once again. I originally thought I was finished and I was going to just put a border on it. Something told me that it wasn't really finished, and I sent a picture to my stitch buddies and Finn for their opinions. Sure enough - they ALL said it wasn't finished by just slapping a wide border on it. So then, I began my quest for a pieced border that I thought would look right.

I remembered the Border Workbook by Janet Kime, and I was off an running again. Why, oh why, didn't I listen to my high school math teacher when he told me that someday I would really need what he was trying to teach us? It took me three sheets of math equations to finally figure out what size the little squares on point should be. That doesn't mean the other equations I worked were wrong - oh no! They were correct, but just not the right size for THIS quilt top. HA!

I really like this quilt top, and I love the blocks in it. I like it so much that I am going to handquilt it! GASP!!!! I haven't handquilted a BIG quilt in a lot of years. It's 91" square, and I am going to scallop the edges. I have no idea what I will use for the quilting motifs, but that's another day, says Scarlett!

Here's a closeup of Vicky's violets block. You can click on the photo of the entire quilt to enlarge the picture to see all the blocks if you'd like. Even though, the quilt top looks a bit skewed, it really is nicely square in it's construction. I am shorter than the 91" it takes to hang it on my design wall, so my pics always look a little weird!