Sue Quilts!: Tessie's Enchanted Garden Quilt

This is Tessie's quilt that she worked all of last winter to make. It's a beautiful quilt made of cotton, flannel and wool with embroidery to boot. I was extremely intimidated to work on it not only for its beauty, but because I've not done a flannel and wool quilt yet. I had a feeling that trying to rip out stitches from flannel would not be easy. So I pretested my background filler ideas.

Some worked some didn't and I didn't have to rip out anything. I decided to quilt different fillers in each of the blocks. So I loaded up the top and got to work. I found that quilting on the flannel with a wool batting was extremely forgiving! I didn't even feel the need to use invisible thread for stitching around the appliqué. Half way through, my check spring needed replacing. This was evident by some intermittent bird's nests on the back. I found I could rip out easily if I did it from the back.

I tried to do some Nemeshing in the dark borders and around the flowers. I had trouble seeing anything here so it's not perfect!

I love the embroidered leaves!

Tessie is a beekeeper and always includes some bees in her quilts. In the bottom center of the outer border, she put a bee skep with some bees flying around. So on the block above that, I put a honey comb design and quilted some drones in it.