Tending Roses

This is the other quilt I had in this weekend's show. This is an original design, made up of mostly traditional blocks. I wanted to feature the theme fabric of yellow-orange roses, without just using it as the border. I spent hours in EQ trying multiple layouts. The on-point blocks allowed for large side triangles for the theme fabric. I designed the block with green triangles to symbolize thorns, and pieced those sections as strips.

I sent this to a professional long-arm quilter because of its size, and she did a good job. However, in the theme fabric she quilted around the vines, roses and grapes, but the centers of the roses were loose. After I put the binding on, I thought they looked a little too puffy (they're 3 inches across), so I added quilting in a spiral following the petals.

After stitching roses, you can barely see the stitches here, but it does add texture.