As predicted last week I managed to finish adding the fourth row of burgundy flowers to each side of the Batik Flower Garden Quilt. So it was back to the mattress Store for a good look at how the top is fitting the mattress.

I managed to baste 144 burgundy hexagons which is enough to put together 24 burgundy flowers for the bottom edge of the quilt.

By this time next week I hope to have a decision about which end will be facing up. I also plan to have all 24 burgundy flowers completed.

Here is my basket all packed and ready to go.

I was all psyched for the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild Sewcial at the Hopewell Train Station today. Unfortunately, the event was first postponed by two hours because of bad weather, and then cancelled for the day because the weather continued to be terrible with salting of roads and major sheets of ice causing dangerous traffic conditions.

That won’t stop us from having a virtual sewcial though.

All day today the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild members will stitch their little hearts out and post to instagram with the hashtag #cjmqg. You can follow along on Instagram to enjoy the fun.

Here are my contributions to the day’s discussion:

Our real life Sewcial will be scheduled for another day soon. I am anxious for it to take place because I am interested in asking people how they like their machines since I am thinking of buying a new one. I’m currently using the machine I learned to sew with in the 1960s.

My English Paper Piecing progress for this week was the construction of 24 burgundy flowers. That is just enough to add another border to both sides of the Batik Flower Garden Quilt. It also means I can postpone the decision for another week about which end of this quilt will face up.

Update: It is Tuesday. It’s time for me to link up to Jessica’s Monday Morning Star Count.

By now I have finished adding twelve flowers to one side of the quilt top. I’ve also added the green hexagons along that edge. I am working on the second side with eight flowers added. With only four more flowers to go, plus the addition of green hexagons, I could conceivably finish the second side today.

Before I move on to the topic at hand for this week’s post I want to report on my progress on the latest Batik Flower Garden Quilt burgundy border. I have finished the third round on the left side and the right side. This involved adding 22 burgundy flowers, three of which were already in place last week.

I still have to decide what direction to face the central medallion before I decide which edge is going to be the top and which edge is going to be the bottom. It is actually an important decision because of the way the batik flowers and solid flowers interact. Given how many burgundy flowers I must make to flesh out the borders on this quilt, that decision can wait for a few more weeks. I’ll just build up a big pile of burgundy flowers in the mean time.

Now on to the corners…

I’ve been giving more thought to how I am going to approach the two corners on the bottom of the quilt. Last week I was considering using the flowers pictured below for the corners.

I am now thinking that I will save those flowers for something else, perhaps adding them to my collection of random scrappy flowers.

Instead of using the hybrid solid/batik flowers for the corners, I am planning on using the few totally batik flowers that I have left. I think it is important to pull those batik fabrics back into the quilt design near the edge.

I have a total of 14 of these flowers. That would give me seven for each corner.

When I first started combining flowers for the body of this quilt I had a bit of a false start when I put together three of these batik flowers with some green hexagons. It became clear to me that this was not going to yield the results I wanted, so I put this false beginning aside, and chose another path.

I always thought that I might later rescue these three flowers, but a look at the photo below shows that in my haste I removed papers from the hexagons along the middle making it very difficult to recover these three flowers later. Oh, and say “Hello” to an untrimmed batik hexie on the left side. How did I miss him?

Ripping out those seams would mean sewing a number of seams without reinforcement from paper pieces. That means I will be saving this piece and building something around it, perhaps with the hybrid flowers. I definitely won’t be recovering these three batik flowers. It would just involve too much work. It also means I am stuck with just seven batik flowers per corner to finish off my quilt.

Using the 14 flowers available to me gives me the following layout for my corners, which I think will work rather well.

You’ll undoubtedly notice the snow in the above photograph, and in the one below.

I was having a bit of fun with my staging area when I took these photos.

It had snowed the night before. This caused me to think about coming up with an alternative staging area for work in process. I already have the solution, but that’s another post.

Last week I completed a border of burgundy flowers and took photos on my front porch photo staging area. I decided that it was time to show how the batik flower garden quilt is fitting on the surface of a queen sized bed. I took a few photos on my bed in my cramped bedroom and realized that I not only didn’t have enough light to take good photos there, I also didn’t have enough room to take the pictures. It’s a really small room. The bed dominates it.

So I took my quilt top to the local mattress store, which happens to be a Sleepys where my husband and I have done business in recent years. I bought my queen sized mattress there, and the two twin sized mattresses that reside in what we still call Lucky’s room. Lucky is the dear cat we lost last week.

I placed my quilt top on a couple of queen sized mattresses and went to town doing a photo shoot, and here are the results:

Aside from my photo shoot I managed to accomplish some stitching this week, although not nearly as much as last week.

I basted up 53 hexagons for my scrap hexagon collection. Every now and then I will stitch up another flower from that collection. One of these days I will be putting together a scrappy utility quilt from those flowers.

I also put together some flowers that I hope to use along the foot of the Batik Flower Garden Quilt design. These flowers are a combination of solid and batik. I ran out of the brown batik, so I had to substitute the solid brown.

I also put together three burgundy flowers and added them to one of the sides of the quilt. I am anticipating continuing that border along both sides and the bottom.

The salesman at the Sleepys store was very polite and invited me back to take photos any time I wanted. So I will probably return after completing this next round of burgundy flowers.

Those of you coming to this post from the Monday Morning Star Count link back, please take a look at my progress post from last week.