2023 Nappanee IN Quilt Garden and Quilt

Every year I help plant the Nappanee IN Quilt Garden and I make a quilt to match the garden.  The garden quilts then hang in the visitor center that is just behind the garden.  Here is this years Garden - called Home Sweet Home.  The design is of a bird house.  This photo is when the flowers have just been planted, so you don't see much color yet.

The Nappanee Indiana Quilt Garden is part of the Quilts Along the Heritage Trail garden tour which is a great tourist attraction and wonderful for everyone to take part in.  It takes a full day or two to visit all 15 gardens.  The gardens are all free and located in 6 towns in the area.  Of course you also have to stop and eat at some great local restaurants along the way!

Here are is a close up of some of the flowers.  It is fun to watch the garden grow and see how the plants fill out and fill all the spaces.

My quilt always has the center square as a replica of the garden design.  Then I add a border of some kind around the center square.  This year I thought I would put birds in all the blocks of the border.  After designing about 12 different birds I decided that wasn't what I wanted to do!  Back to the drawing board.  I decided to make a variety of bird houses and decorated them in different colors and fabrics.

What I didn't know at the time was that they were going to have a contest for different age groups to decorate bird houses to go along with the garden!  What a great surprise!  They hung the pretty bird houses in side beds beside the quilt garden.  That was just perfect!

Aren't they cute!

Here are a couple photos of planting the quilt garden.  You can see here how the design is staked out for the various plants.  I'm in the upper left of the photo in a blue t shirt.  We had a great day to plant.  It started out cool, but warmed up and wasn't to hot.  My sister Karen was visiting and was able to help with planting the garden this year!

Most of the flowers planted in this photo.  The brown dirt rows will be covered with black much later.

After a very busy, tiring day- it was time for a break with a couple of the garden committee members- Karen Clipp and Julie Dijkstra and me in the blue t shirt.

I'm not sure which committee person took the three photos above.  Thanks to whoever it was!

If you are ever in the area, please stop and see our wonderful gardens!

June Fly Away Challenge

                                                        Triangle Tango  26 1/2" x 26 1/2"

The June Island Batik Ambassador challenge is called Fly Away.  Why that title?  

The challenge was to make something using the flying geese block and one of the precut collections we received in the first Island Batik box.                   

Many thanks to Island Batik,  Hobbs Batting,  Aurifil Thread and Schmetz Needles for providing             products to make this project.

I love flying geese so I was excited to work on this project.  I usually make flying geese blocks by paper piecing as that makes very accurate blocks and I like to paper piece.

For fabric I decided I wanted to use the green and orange Island Batik gradation precut packages I got in the first Island Batik box this year.  The green collection is called Glorious Greens and mine came as a 10" Stack and the orange collection called Opulent Orange came in a 2 1/2" strip pack.   All 10 of the gradation collections come in Stacks (10" squares), Stamps (5" squares) and Strips (2 1/2" strips). I wanted to do something with colors going from light to dark in both greens and oranges.  I found the orange gradations to range from a pale yellow to coral to a dark orange. 

I selected  five green and five orange that had a nice gradation from light to dark.  I decided to use Island Batik's solid black fabric for the background to make the colors really pop.

I had fun playing around with possible design layouts and decided on using these two row patterns.

I needed to make 12 of the orange rows and 24 of the green.

I got busy with the green rows.

When I had the orange rows all done I added the black side triangles. I laid  the blocks out with the center square in a square blocks.  Adding the green rows will give the quilt even more movement.

I used black Aurifil thread for all the quilting.  Black thread on black fabric can be a challenge.  Hobbs Cotton batting worked well for  this table mat as it is soft and has nice drape.  I used Schmetz  Microtex needles which I use for almost everything.  I especially like the microtex as it is a thinner needle and doesn't make as large of a stitching hole.

I named the quilt Triangle Tango as the flying geese seem to be stepping out and about in a somewhat crazy pattern.  Probably not Tango steps, but certainly a dance of their own!

June Doll House - Office

 Time for a new room in the Amy Bradley Doll House Quilt.  

This month it is the Office.

I changed up a few colors in this block.  I made my computer gray with a black screen to match  my own computer colors.  I also made my desk look a little more like wood- but still keeping the colors light.  Another cute block!

This block I'm putting in the middle row of my rooms on the right side.

Here is my sister Jody's laundry room.  Isn't it cute!  I can't wait to see all her rooms put together.

Only one room to go!  Next month will be Bedrooms.

If you are making this quilt- how are you coming along?  It's really looking like a house now, so I'm getting anxious to get it all together.  Remember you can purchase a pattern at any time at Amy Bradley Designs.  While you are there be sure and check out all of her other cute patterns.