I’ve devoted all of my energy this week to the Batik Flower Garden Quilt. I finished a second row of burgundy flowers on two sides of the central medallion.

I went to the trouble of placing the piece pictured above on my queen sized bed to get an idea of how large I want the central medallion to grow. It was easy to see that I could add at least two more rows, and so i did.

While I am certain that it was right to add those two rows of flowers to the central medallion, I am not sure if I should add two more columns of flowers also, and I don’t know whether or not I should add another two rows while I’m at it. I have to take into consideration how many batik flowers I have left to use. I also need to take into account how close I want the next design element to be to the edge of the bed. I am planning to add a border of solid flowers like the ones below to outline the burgundy border. I don’t want that outline to butt up exactly to the edge of the bed.

The good news is that I have a little more design flexibility because I found the pieces that I thought I had left behind in New York City. I noticed them in my studio the other day. This gives me five more batik flowers I can use. Here are the pieces I thought were lost forever.

The pieces above will free up five batik flowers if I disassemble them. There is also a small piece that I had put together when I was trying out a possible layout of flowers. I can cannibalize that to free up another three batik flowers. Add those eight flowers to the 19 that I have in a pile and that makes 27 batik flowers I can add into this design if I choose to do so.

In order to come to a final decision about how I am going to flesh out this design I think it would be helpful to piece together the remaining two borders of burgundy hexagons. That is what I have been working on these past few days. I don’t have those borders finished yet, but here you can see the progress on these borders.

Above is the border to go along the bottom. Below is the border to go along the right side.

After I finish these two borders I will place all of the pieces on the queen sized bed to get an idea of what more I would like to add.