Rosebrock Garden Cuttings

Cast your mind back to September of last year and a post that I wrote about a bag of leftovers from a quilt that my Mom and I had made together……

I had started working on the alternating blocks while we were visiting in Oxford, England for 2 months.  But, when I returned and started to put the blocks together I realized that I didn’t like how they looked.   SO, I put the original blocks aside and started over again with a different design.  Then, when I got to the border, I designed and pieced one side of the quilt, but the I didn’t like it when I started to apply it to the quilt.  Once again, it was pitched aside and I started over again.

SO, as I was doing some cleaning out, I came across a bag containing the following bits and pieces……  all leftovers from the original quilt…..

After going thru all of this  and determining how many different blocks and patches I had in each type I moved to Electric Quilt and started to design a block that would use as many of these pieces as possible.  This is what I came up with….

I then took photos of the two blocks and played with them in Photoshop until I came up with this…..

After piecing the center, I auditioned a ton of fabrics to pick the borders.  After deciding on a small pink border, I started looking at all of the small strips that I had left over and turned it into a piano key border.

The final border was a toughie……I kept putting fabrics on the design wall and taking photos of them, but couldn’t find anything that I was happy with.    Then I came across  one of the Caryl Bryer Fallert gradation fabrics and was really excited to see how it looked.  I spent a LONG time trying to figure out how to turn the corners so that the colors blended, but finally decided to just start attaching it and to adjust as I went.

ANYWAY, here is the finished top……

I am now working on the backing, and hope to  use the last few bits of the leftovers.

Oh, and about the quilt name…… when we spent our two months in Oxford, we lived in a house just across from Merton College that was built in the 1500’s and remodeled in the 1700’s.   There was a gorgeous courtyard, complete with a pond, 2 pooping Mallards and beds and pots of wonderful plants.  The garden was named “Rosebrock Garden” and the quilt is made of the leftovers (cuttings) from “Mother Daughter Flower Garden”……thus  “Rosebrock Garden Cuttings”

……more to come…….