I finished the binding on this quilt last night, making it a strictly July project. The women in my family hand-stitched the flower squares at our family reunion and I put them together in a quilt. Truly, it was a collaborative effort. I asked the ladies to bring small scraps of fabric and we combined them to make this very happy result. My friend Kaye machine quilted it. I love that the squares show our individual personalities, but also how harmoniously they come together. Almost every petal in our flowers is a different fabric, and combining our collections made so many more possibilities. What a perfect metaphor for family relationships.
We sat together to sew these over a couple of days when our kids were asleep, etc. English paper piecing became an obsession. To make the hexagon flowers, you wrap fabric around paper hexagons, and sew the edges together. “Must. make.more.hexies.” I heard again and again, in automaton voices. We also solved the world’s problems as we sat and talked while wielding needles and thread. Quilting might possibly be the solution to everything, or at least it is a worthy distraction with a beautiful result.