Gardener's Touch

I've finished quilting the Gardener's Touch quilt but I still need to add the binding. I thought I'd show you how it's coming along and give you the cutting directions. As you can see, it's currently undergoing rigorous cat-approval testing.

I'm going to assume that anyone reading my blog who wants to make some version of this quilt knows the basic construction techniques and will just need stuff like cutting sizes.

In making this quilt, I used a panel of the Thimbleberries Gardener's Touch floral squares, two Gardener's Touch charm packs, the border fabric, and the background fabric. I bought 1-1/2 to 2 yards of the background fabric and didn't really keep track of how much was needed, but I would guess it was somewhere around a yard. For the border fabric, I believe I used 1-1/2 yards.

Of course, you can use any floral fabric you want, but if you use the Gardener's Touch panel, I should mention that there are 15 different floral blocks. Since this quilt uses only 13 floral squares, I decided not to use the two blocks with white backgrounds because I thought they'd blend into the alternate blocks and look funny. I'll use those extras for throw pillows or something. For this quilt, I cut the floral blocks at 7-1/2".

For the alternate blocks, I made 12 blocks. (Sorry the photo came out kind of dark, but I think you can see what I'm talking about.) Each block starts with a center square cut 2-1/2" (cut 12 for 12 blocks).

For the middle round, the corner squares are cut at 2" (cut 48 for 12 blocks). The rectangular background pieces are cut at 2" x 2-1/2" (cut 48 for 12 blocks).

For the outer round, the corner squares are cut at 1-1/2" (cut 48 for 12 blocks). The rectangular background pieces are cut at 1-1/2" x 5-1/2" (cut 48 for 12 blocks).

After I assembled the alternating floral and pieced blocks for the center, I added a pieced border consisting of two rounds of floral squares and background rectangles to continue the chain out a bit. I tried writing out the sizes for these, but it seemed awfully confusing for purposes of this post. If this is something you want to do, email me and I'll try to get those measurements for you.

Finally, I added a floral border--I cut the border at 8" but have trimmed it down a little after quilting so it's 7"--the same size as the center blocks.

Happy quilting!