Quilting and flowers

showing the zig zag edge over the side of sleigh bed

showing the zig zag edge on the blue pillows at the top of the bed

My English paper pieced rose star quilt is making good progress this week I finally got the last roses connected with the winged hexagon bits that go between and attached them all together to arrive at a finished size of about 86x84 inches. I went out to visit mom and see about getting it put with a backing and batting and getting it professionally basted together so I can hand quilt it more easily. I was not quoted a very good price for that work so I most likely will do it myself. As I have been working I decided to give it a decorative edge of points on the two sides that works out to be part of the design. You can see one edge is completed and the other side is soon to be done to match. Top and bottom or sides will be straight with maybe a border of a few inches added to give it more length for tucking and turning to keep dirty hands off the important parts. It was really difficult to choose but my conservative nature won in the shop when I was choosing the backing. I decided to back it with the same printed white muslin fabric that is between the colorful rose stars. I almost regret not being bolder and going with a red and white Jacobean line print I found but it was what my gut was telling me to do at the moment, use the white... it said. I took time to photograph some of the threads that were pulled out from a section as I removed the basting stitches used to hold the paper parts in place while assembling all the pieces. What a nest of thread it is and it's only about a third of the quilt that these came from to make this pile of threads which balled up is as big as both of my fists side by side.

pile of basting threads from the paper pieces of a third of the quilt after removing them and the paper. 

Now I am home getting ready to finish up the last of the zig zag edge on the other side of the Rose Star quilt. It has been a long haul from Jan. 15th when I began making rose stars in the challenge. It was a small block quilt group on Flickr.com set up with a simple tutorial by Clare who goes by the Nome De Plume Selfsewn. She is the blogger who started the group for us to share photos in the "Rose-Star block party" on Flickr. I am very happy that I kept going making rose stars beyond the challenge number of six making 54 which is just large enough to fit our queen sized sleigh bed top. It's going to be fun finishing it off over the remaining months of this year. At least I hope it won't take much longer than a year to complete the quilt even with quilting by hand. It could be that I need two years to finish but I hope not. 

quilt with zig zag at top and bottom on the bed 

quilt top with straight top and bottom.

The next thing we did was stop at the Merrifield Garden Center in Gainesville to see what we could find. I was hoping to find a dark purple 'Nicky' summer phlox but they didn't have a single one. Some others that were pretty but not that dark and rich in color. Mom got excited about some of the day-lilies that were still in bloom this late in the summer. She went out and picked one called Vanilla Fluff which is a big 6 inch doubled flower that smells of vanilla and the one she selected had three flowers open. So we brought it home and I planted it strait away. Another flowering plant in the green house caught her eye from half way across the nursery and we went to see it. Crossandra's orange flowers were pretty spectacular so she said she would like one of these to go home too. We packed it up and went back to Manassas. I sketched it at her recommendation this morning before I came home to DC.

Vanilla Fluff big day lily blooms

Vanilla Fluff daylilies

crossandra in the rose pot Manassas 

sketch of crossandra