French Roses

On Monday I spent the day at Patchwork Angel doing a class on the quilt pattern "French Roses" by Heather French.

The class was run by the lovely and very patient Jenny. She showed us how to make it as a quilt as you go quilt.  We had a great time, there were only 4 of us in the class which was good, as we all spread out, some of us more than others (not me of course, ahem cough cough). It certainly made me see how messy I am when I'm playing around with fabrics and auditioning them. I also kept on losing my freezer paper templates. I had to cut out the leaves twice. My cut flower pieces kept on hiding on me too. I really created a great impression.

I took along a fat quarter bundle and a couple of half yard pieces of Flower Sugar 2 and some extra yardage for the background and backing. I originally decided to have the background as off white and the backing in a Flower Sugar print, but when I was putting it together, Jenny and I decided to go a little bit out there and swap the backing and background around. 

This is the result. We only made 4 blocks on the day. They won't be staying in this order, but it was just enough to get a feel for making them. Because I swapped the background, the print I'd chosen to use as the binding didn't look good so we searched the shop for an alternative and came up with the pre made bias in blue and white. It doesn't show in the photos, but it brings out the blue in the floral prints, and I think it ties it all together. I think it's going to have a shabby chic feel. 

One thing I've learned from this experience, I think I've had enough of using all the one fabric line in a project. It looks pretty, but I was dying to add in other fabrics.  I ended up getting a couple of pieces of co-ordinating prints from other designers, as again, with swapping the background it meant I needed a couple more green and red prints.

The only other issue I had was as I used the plain off white for the backing, it was very very very very obvious if my batting wasn't placed absolutely perfectly, and of course it wasn't, so I am going to have to re-think the fabric I'm using for the backing. 

OK so it doesn't look quite so obvious in this photo, but believe me, it looks pretty awful in real life.

This will mean I'll have to purchase some more fabric as I don't have enough yardage of anything that will look good with this in my stash, lol!  As I've already made 4 blocks and there are 25 blocks in this quilt. I think I'll make one more block with the off white so I'll have one row with off white backing. For the rest I'll use a multi coloured backing. Then I'm going to try to do something really amazing and wonderful with the 5 off white blocks to try and hide the "gaps". I have no idea what amazing and wonderful entails but I'll keep you posted. 

Here are pics of what everyone else made on the day, I love the way they are all very different.

Therese used Flower Sugar 2 as well, but also added some other prints and went with the white backing and yellow binding for a very pretty result.

Christine used lovely muted colours including some Martinique, and this is her first ever quilt!

Bev chose 30's repros, don't they look good in this design.

This was a finished quilt that was on display.

I loved the use of scraps in the last one and the colour scheme was gorgeous, I just wish I had taken a couple more photos.

Now I have another WIP to add to my growing pile. I'm going to have to put this one aside for the time being while I try to catch up with all the other projects and the crochet tutorial.