Civil War Scavenger

This quilt was made from a batch of blocks a friend wasn't interested in and is the penultimate quilt from my original stack of 22 tops that were ready when Terpsichore arrived. The colors were too dark and low contrast for her tastes. As soon as I saw them I knew what I wanted to do with them. I collected all the civil war reproduction fabrics from my stash and made as many variations on flying geese as I could stand and then layed it all out until I filled in a large rectangle. Adding a few borders and some applique for interest completed the top. I quilted with the back of the quilt face up so I could really see the stitching. I chalked in the vase outline and then added detail free hand. The vines were inspired by a quilt pictured in Quilting Makes the Quilt by Lee Cleland. Once they were all quilted in I went back through and just put as many jacobean flowers in the large spaces as I could cram in there. All the free spaces were then quilted with vines and leaves. There's even a little bird and a butterfly in it. It took me several attempts (putting the quilt on the machine, working for a few hours, taking it back off for a week or more) and lots of scrolling back and forth because I mostly worked freehand, but the net results were pretty good.

Thanks, Thorin, for designing my swirly leaf and tulip (the leaf can be seen at the top left corner of the picture at left)! It never ceases to amaze me how diverse a group of people prove to be very good at quilting!

The only quilt that remains from the original stack is a christmas quilt which will be going on the machine tonight.