Crafty Garden Craft-A-Long: Making the Garden Bed with the Quilting Team

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March is National Craft Month! To celebrate, we’re going to participate in a fun craft-a-long within our company, building a craft garden that spans all of the craft divisions of Peak Media and the quilting division is up first! We will be the foundation of the garden and therefore in charge of quilting the base of the garden and then knit, crochet, jewelry, sewing, etc will be adding their touches to the garden until we have the final product – a beautiful three-dimensional craft garden!

With short notice on getting fabric for this project, Tracy Mooney, editor of Quiltmaker and Quick and Easy Quilts,  had an idea to contact Karen Gibbs from Banyan Batiks to request fabric. Her office is located just a few miles from our office, so if she could provide us yardage, it would be a big help. Banyan Batiks is a division of Northcott. They create unusual batiks that really push the boundaries of what you think of when you hear the word “batik”. Nothing simple here. It might have bicycles, or be inspired by street art and graffiti, it might have some metallic, or it might be a plaid. They are truly stunning fabrics and Karen Gibbs is the mastermind behind them.

Karen gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, and I met Tracy at the Banyan headquarters a few hours later. The studio walls at Banyan are lined with past and current collections, strike-offs (fabric samples they are considering for inclusion in future collections), and fabrics that are coming to a store near you in the very near future. In other words, it is a fabric lover’s dream come true. Karen quickly set to work pulling out every green and brown fabric that might work and the large cutting table was filled with at least 100 different fabrics within minutes. Now was the hard part, we needed to select fabrics for a table runner that we were still designing. Luckily, Karen is a wonderful quilt designer who understands this dilemma and she encouraged us to take more than we needed for the project.

Banyan Batiks
A sampling of Banyan Batiks, www.northcott.com

Eileen Fowler, editor of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quiting, designed our “garden bed”. Eileen says of her design process, “As we were contemplating a small and simple foundation for planting a crafty garden, Tracy mentioned Rail Fence blocks. I remembered that Quiltmaker’s Garden, their 30th anniversary quilt, used those around the base of the gazebo.” McCall’s Quilting and Acquisitions editor, Lori Baker, suggested an on-point setting.

Quiltmaker’s Garden Quilt Pattern
Quiltmaker’s Garden, designed by Interim Art and Editorial Director of Quilting, Denise Starck.  A lovely gazebo adorned with flowers, birds, butterflies, and appliquéd vines and leaves are showcased in Quiltmaker’s 30th Anniversary celebration quilt, originally featured as a popular five-part series in Quiltmaker  magazine. This 72” x 94” twin-sized quilt features piecing, foundation piecing, and appliqué and is sure to be a quilter’s favorite!

“With these ideas in mind, I was ready to play in EQ8 for a quick layout. Small 6” blocks would work well for both the Rail Fence blocks and Nine-Patches, and when arranged on point, the quilt will be 34” x 17”.  I thought it would be fun to “dig” into our quilty garden with both grassy greens and earthy browns,” Eileen said.

Here is our final design representing earth and foliage in a garden bed.

Craft Garden Quilt Design by Eileen Fowler
Garden Bed Design by Eileen Fowler

Eileen has cut all of the patches needed and now she, Tracy, and I will be piecing the blocks over the next few days.  Once we’ve got our garden bed pieced, Lori will be quilting it.

Feeling inspired to sew your own garden? Here are few things to help you get design ideas. Learn about a traditional form of creating a garden quilt in this blog that Tracy wrote about Grandmother’s Flower Garden and its contemporary invocations:

www.quiltingdaily.com/grandmothers-flower-garden-favorite-of-traditional-quilt-patterns/

Grandmother's Flower Garden
Grandmother’s Flower Garden and its modern invocations

Flower quilts there are aplenty, but due to the nature of the subject matter (think soft, curved petals), many are created using appliqué techniques. So what’s a piecer who loves flowers to do? Try some of the many pieced flower quilt block patterns in the quilting universe, of course! The Fons & Porter archives are rich with examples of flower garden quilts made without a single appliqué stitch:

www.quiltingdaily.com/block-friday-pieced-flower-quilts-fons-porter/

Pieced Flowers
Pieced Flower Quilts

Dresden Plate flowers stand out against a chevron-style background made of Flying Geese units in this unusual wall hanging or table topper. This quit was designed by Cheri Leffler and finishes at 30″ x 30″. 

Check back to see how our garden grows!
Anissa

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