Spring Garden Crazy Quilt

I have been slowly working on completing the piecing of my spring garden inspired crazy quilt. I finished the center blocks this week.

I want to dive right in and start embellishing but my next step is to decide on the placement of the applique border. I debated on how to go about the embellishing. I want to create an applique border and considered sewing the entire quilt together, adding the applique and then embellishing as a whole quilt. But that makes for a large quilt to work with, each block is about 13" square, then there will be a 6.5 inch border, so that is around 52 inches. This is a digital generated mock up of the quilt after I had a few blocks completed.

Sewn together, it would be to large to take with and work on. So, I am going to wait to sew the blocks together and start with the tentative placement of the applique flowers and foliage and start to embellish the seams. Another design challenge I have been mulling over is how to soften the straight lines of the blocks and blend the colors of the fabric. I have a stash of lace that I have plans on painting. Oh, such challenges, must be why I enjoy creating my own quilts.

I did a test flower to see if I would like the design, size and color. This flower measures about 3 inches. My plan is to create a flower garden inspired border, full of funky flowers, stumpwork bugs and birds.

This quilt is inspired from an antique crazy quilt that my mother owns. I pulled some of my design elements from it, such as the lighter color interior blocks with a darker border, the floral applique.