Juniper Flower Garden Pot

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged but rest assured we have been super busy!   This is our day on the “Juniper” Instagram Blog Hop – welcome!

When my quilty pal, Jessica Van Denburgh from Sew Many Creations asked me to make something from her new fabric collection,“Juniper”, I of course said yes!   Quilty friends are the best and it’s always a pleasure to help out a friend and at the same time get to make one of our patterns with new fabrics.

 

 

Jessica’s new fabric collection, called “Juniper” for Windham Fabric is oh-so-cute and filled with delightful little flowers and flying creatures like beautiful butterflies, majestic dragonflies and some very cute snails.

Once I saw the fabrics, I knew our Garden Party pattern was the perfect project.  I set out to make one Garden Party flower pot !  The Garden Party pattern is available in our Colourwerx shop and Jessica’s new fabric line “Juniper” will be arriving to shops this month so be on the lookout!

First off, I cut the background piece, added borders and layered my batting, backing fabric and the quilt top together in a quilt sandwich.  Using my favorite Aurifil 40wt Gold thread – #2975 – I curvy quilted the background.  This is just a regular straight stitch and keeping the feed dogs UP (like regular stitching) ,  I moved the quilt from side to side creating gentle undulations down the quilt.  It’s fun and relaxing and always looks so “artsy”.

Hint, hint!- You may have noticed that I am machine quilting my quilt BEFORE I place the applique shapes in place – that’s because I’m not very good at free motion machine quilting, On smaller pieces such as this, I like to machine quilt the background first before fusing and stitching around the applique shapes.  That way the piece is quilted and I don’t need to worry about machine quilting in and around shapes.  So far, no quilt police have shown up at my door demanding the piece be handed over- lol!

Once the background was quilted I cut out and began to fuse and applique stitch my shapes in place.  I started with the stem and leaves – centering them on on the background piece.  I love to use my decorative stitches around shapes like these to texturize and embellish the applique – I find the decorative stitches enhance and add an extra dimension of fun and whimsy to the pieces.

Next up – the large pot.  I used the widest zigzag stitch around this shape.  My Bernina 750QE can go up to 9mm so that was the perfect choice.

Then the large flower head.  I used my blanket stitch (aka buttonhole stitch).  These pieces took the most time as there were lots of inner and outer curves to negotiate – my patience game definitely had to be ‘right on’ for these pieces.

Finally , the flower center .  I used my most favorite decorative stitch from the Bernina  – this is stitch #419 – you may have something similar on your machine.

Lastly, and because Jessica designed so many cute little creatures in her fabric, I placed some fusible web on the wrong side of scrap fabric leftover and fussy cut out some super cute flower circles for the pot and lots of cute creatures to fuse buzzing around the flower pot.

I even added a little extra flower growing near the bottom.

 

That was super fun !  Be sure to check out all the other projects made with “Juniper” on the Windham Fabrics Instagram feed.  And also be sure to enter your name for a giveaway on September 3rd by following all of the “Juniper” bloggers and also Jessica’s Instagram page at Sew Many Creations!

Until your next colour fix~
L&C