I can smell the green

Spring is coming, I can smell it in the air.

March is the month of green for me, by the end of the month I can start planting peas and onions in my garden.

I will be eager to get out in the garden and clean it up, getting rid of all the dead winter junk I left behind in October.  I might even get some mulch put in place.

I read somewhere that if you put down damp newspapers under the mulch the weeds won’t come up through the paper. I am going to try that this year and hope for a weed free (almost) garden.



One of the flowers I love the most in my garden are the low growing and small beautiful blue Forget – Me – Knots. I made this little quilt several years ago and it was featured in Quilts and more.



I was inspired by those wonderful Forget-Me-Knot flowers that bloom for months in my ramshackle garden and somehow magically spread themselves all over the flower beds.

I love that about them.

I never know where they will crop up the next year. I also love the fact that they are BLUE.

• The first thing I did to make this little quilt was to make a quick sketch of what I wanted the quilt to look like.
• Next I fused up some turquoise fabrics to make the flowers from. I used my sketch to trace around the shape of the flower heads using an extra fine sharpie marker.
• I then placed the marker drawing against the fused side of the fabric and pressed with a hot dry iron. This is basically a printing processes and the marker will transfer to the back of the fused side of the fabric.
• I can then cut out the flower shape out, just inside or right on the marker line.

• I cut out from fused green fabric a group of elongated leaf shapes, like the ones that grow with the Forget-Me-Knots. I cut these free form with a decorative deckle blade in my 45mm rotary cutter.

TIP: Remember to always turn your mat over to the back side when cutting with decorative blades.

• I “auditioned” the leaves and flowers on different color background fabrics and finally settled on this yummy Pink Pulp fabric.

• I arranged all the flowers and leaves on the background fabric and fused them in place.
• Next I started “auditioning” fabrics for the border.

This rich blue fabric – The Blues - really caught my eye and become the border on this sweet and inviting little quilt.



Finally I had to quilt this sunny quilt. I choose to outline all the flowers by stitching - stitch in the ditch around each one then added little French knots to finish off the center of each bloom to act as stamen.

Free form feathers seemed to be the right thing to quilt in the border of this quilt, and stippling was the perfect compliment to the feathers. I quilted the feathers and did the outline stitching in 30wt rayon, and the stippling in YLI silk thread.

The last thing I did was add in a fused binding to finish this quilt. You can read through a tutorial of a fused binding by clicking the tab at the top of my blog, or review the video from a couple of days ago showing you step by step how I put on a fused binding.

I can’t wait for my Forget-Me-Knots to start blooming this year!