The Garden Party Quilt is a beautiful appliqué quilt pattern by Laura Heine. It's made up of twelve blocks filled with glorious flowers and butterflies flitting about. I chose to make only nine of these blocks as that's all that I needed to fill the space on the wall behind my longarm where this quilt will hang.
First, I had to fuse on all of the appliqué pieces onto the background fabric. To do this you trace the pattern onto the fabric first. Typically, quilter's use light boxes to do this but since I have a glass dining room table I simple used that with a light underneath on the floor. I've never done transfer work before and so I didn't realize that you have to reverse the pattern so my first block came out backwards. Oh well, live and learn, right?
After fusing all the appliqué pieces onto the background fabric I blanket stitched them all down. This is very time consuming so after finishing one block I decided that I would do a block between each quilt that I made or whenever I got around to it. I bought this kit in April of 2019 so it's been awhile that I've been working on this.
I also realized that I would need so many different colors of threads to appliqué this that it would cost a small fortune. So, instead, I went online and found a kit with two boxes of bobbins which had every color that I needed. This saved me quite a bit.
I used some "handwriting" fabric for the sashes and borders. And for the backing I used the $50.00 gift certificate that I had won doing the Quilter's Planner Challenge and got some bright green fabric to use for the backing. I'll also use it to make a sleeve to hang the quilt up on the wall behind my longarm.
I have never quilted a fusible appliqué quilt. I did some research and found out that I needed a non-stick needle. I also found out that it helped to iron/steam the fusible right before stitching it so the needle would go through easier as the fusible glue would melt and not be gummy. And I also found out that you have to clean your needle with alcohol during the process to keep the gooey stuff off. Actually, though, when it came time to quilt this I had no problems and didn't have to use those suggestions.
There isn't much room to quilt between the appliqué pieces so I found a meandering design that I thought might work. I loaded up my longarm with a practice piece and tried it out along with the new non stick needle. I used Glide White thread on top and bottom and Quilter's Dream Wool batting to make the appliqués pop!
This was the most expensive quilt that I have made so far. And the most time consuming. If I had a new sewing machine I could have done the appliqué on there and saved time but doing it by hand gave the quilt a very organic look.
Since we are still sheltering in place as my husband is at risk it was difficult to get the hardware we needed to hang this. I finally ordered marine hooks and a dowel online. It didn't quite hang as nice as I would like though since the marine hooks stuck out too far and made the top corners and middle of the quilt bulge out where they're in the wall. I ended up stuffing batting behind the top binding in-between those points and it looked somewhat better. When Covid isn't keeping us in we'll go so if we can find something better to hang it with and change it out. But for now ..... there it is!
Remember to pick up a needle and thread and stitch some love into your world❣️
