Tea Flowers Reveal and June OMG

Tracy at It’s A T-Sweets Day and Cindy of In A Stitch Quilting hosted their second Mystery quilt along.  It just started on April 1st and completes on June 30th.  It is time for our big reveal!  We also made this project our June OMG on Patty’s Elm Street Quilts website.  These two incentives really helped us get ‘er done!

The rules for this QAL are very simple:  1) use the mystery fabric, and 2) share your results by June 30th.  You may also share updates on your blog or via Instagram using #mystery_qal.  Make anything you wish, any size, using as many other fabrics as you want as long as the mystery fabric is used.

Tea Flowers in Tomato

Here is the mystery fabric from Connecting Threads Tea Flowers in Tomato (#91329) on the left and a second fabric from the same line called Cream on Cream (polka dot) on the right.

Tea Flowers Layout

So what did we make??  We used a tutorial for a herringbone design from a pattern that I will share tomorrow.  Here is the initial layout on the design wall, all 10 columns by 13 rows of it:

We used the pattern as a suggestion because we didn’t have quite enough fabric.  So we used MATH to determine how many blocks we could have based on the amount of fabric.  Novel idea, huh?!  This is kind of a two-fer because I have always wanted to make a herringbone quilt.  That was before I realized it was just good ‘ole half-square triangles again in a different layout.  Good thing we have had a bit of HST practice lately, like for Postcard.

Tea Flower Details

We decided to make 6″ half-square triangle (HSTs) blocks.  I shared this information in an earlier post, but I used the Clover white chalk ‘pen’ to mark the line on the back of the red squares.  As Wendy asked, couldn’t we have used our laser light on the white square instead of marking them?  Yes we certainly could have but then I couldn’t try my new toy!

I marked, sewed on each side of the line and then handed them over to Sue.  Sue cut them all apart, ironed them open and trimmed them.  While she was working on that, I was feverishly clearing the design wall of I Spy so that she could start on the layout.  Phew – I Spy was finished in just the knick of time.

Tea Flowers More Details

We did not follow the tutorial suggestions of sewing our quilt top in columns, and we also did not press the seams open.  While both are fabulous ideas, we did not discuss it and once they were ironed and trimmed it just didn’t matter.  My mind works better in rows . . . so there you have it. 

Here’s a peek at that the backing fabric, which is the same color as the lightest color in the Tea Flower fabric.  It’s kind of a rosy peach solid.  We always iron the backing on the island and then flip it over to start pinning.  I vacillated on how to quilt this of course.  In the end, I went with a chevron pattern following each row across from end to end.

I used my walking foot and stitched on each side of the herringbone shape, using the side of the foot as my guide.  Quilting went fairly quickly and I am happy with how it turned out.  And here is the final quilt, posing next to our pretty annuals that perk up our porch (that’s kind of a tongue twister)!

Look for the tutorial tomorrow for a free pattern with all the details for making your own herringbone quilt.

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