Roses for Susan

I’ve been pretty busy this week.  Not enough stitching progress on anything to take photos of.  Instead, I’m sharing an older piece.  Enjoy!

This is a raw edge appliqué quilt I made back in 2003.  I can’t remember exactly when I made it, but it was a gift for my aunt, who was undergoing treatment for cancer.  I had only met my aunt a few years previously, and she was very special to me.  When she became sick, I wanted to make a special piece for her, but I was a novice quilter and not confident of my skills.  She was a lot like me, a fully domesticated woman.  I know at some point she had had a job, but at the point in her life when I met her she enjoyed gardening, baking and quilting, three of my favorite things, too.  She didn’t just garden, either.  She had half of her yard as raised beds for amazing flowers, and she sold them and even did flowers for weddings.
I saw this quilt on the cover of McCall’s Quilting American Patchwork and Quilting (thank you Meermaid!), and I knew it would be perfect for Susan.  It took me a while to get going – I hadn’t done much appliqué before that.  I had done zero thread painting, and I also hadn’t experimented with free motion quilting yet.  I learned for Susan.  (I tried to figure out which issue, but they don’t have an archive that I can locate that goes back that far.)  The pattern was published in the April 2003 issue, and is available for purchase at http://www.apqshop.com/wild-roses.aspx 
I’ve always been happy with the way it turned out.  With the zoomed in pictures, it is pretty clear that I needed to work on my thread tension settings.  It doesn’t show as much in person.
I tried to quilt leaves on a vine in the border.  It is hard to get a good photo of the quilting, but the dog hair shows up quite nicely.
The fabrics are from the fossil fern collection.  It is one of my favorites – like a solid, but with some movement.  The white wood grain fabric was a lucky find in my stash.
I didn’t do a traditional binding on this one.  It looks like I turned both the front and the back under, matched them nicely, and did a row of top stitching.  This explains the lack of squareness.
I sent this quilt up to my aunt right before she passed away.  I didn’t get to speak with her before she passed, so I don’t know what she thought of it.  I’m certain she would have appreciated all of the new techniques I was trying out.  I was lucky enough to get it back from my uncle, and now it hangs in my home, a sweet memory of another quilter in my family.