Zen Garden Quilt Update

Here's a finished one for you! 

I finally finished Step-Daughter Lynne's Zen Garden Quilt. If you missed the first posting about this quilt, you can check it out here. 
Yahooooo!  I really liked how it turned out. Lori Kukuk did a great job with the quilting. 
It hung in the KVQG annual quilt show last April. 




I was going to use a BL Sashiko machine to stitch the water lines, but decided to use perl cotton and add the stitches by hand.



Lori's quilting added little flowers into the cherry blossom hexies. 




This was fun in so many ways - using Daiwabo Japanese taupe fabrics, EPP, working from a picture instead of a pattern, adding in my own touches like the clamshell river rocks at the lower edge of the quilt.

I love moving a quilt from "a work in progress" quilt to a finished quilt. It hasn't made its way to Lynne in Portland yet, but it will soon.

Here's to a finish!

Zen Garden Quilt

I am in the process of making quilts for each of the kids. Amy got her "Chocolate" quilt a few years ago. I have custody of Jim's "Tumbling Out of the Jungle" quilt. AJ, who said "no thankyou", got a simple flannel quilt made of 5 inch squares. I am hoping to do a Star Wars quilt for him in the future. Dan is patiently waiting for his lime green spiral quilt - he may even change his mind before I get started. And I am closing in on finishing Lynne's quilt - Zen Garden. ZG is the second quilt in my rotation. Check this out if you want more info on my rotation system.  

I saw a Garden Path wall hanging in Quilter's Haven in Olathe and fell in love with it. A little research led me to Kitty Pippen's book, Quilting with Japanese Fabrics. 

I asked Lynne what kind of quilt she wanted and recommended she look through my books. One of the quilts she liked was Kitty's Japanese Garden Path quilt. That was a no-brainer for me - I knew which quilt to make for Lynne!


And I knew which fabrics I had to use. Quilter's Haven has a wide variety of Daiwabo Japanese Taupes, so I started stocking up.  Lynne said she likes green and reds, so I decided to do the path in dusty greens, ranging from light to dark. The cherry blossoms in dusty pink. Kitty's quilt had 2 antique kimono panels, so I added in a pair of appliqued storks.

Zen Garden enabled me to do a lot of firsts - using Daiwabo Taupes, designing a quilt from a picture, using Sashiko stitching, and most exciting for me was using paper pieced hexagons. I've posted some about English Paper Piecing. I love it - and the 1/2 inch hexies in Zen Garden was the first time I got to make them. And an obsession was born!






Kitty very effectively used Sashiko stitches to suggest a brook running through her Japanese Garden.  What the heck is Sashiko? Sashiko is a traditional Japanese stitching - usually white on indigo.




 However, I will be doing it the easy way - using the Babylock Sashiko machine. 




I started searching for some motif to replace the kimono panels. I considered Japanese family crest motifs, stylized flowers, and kimono motifs. I finally found the stork applique and amazingly it looked just like the storks in a gorgeous painting we have and that hung in the living room in the home that Lynne grew up in. I hope she will recognize and appreciate the likeness. 

   

So, at this point, I am finishing up the remaining cherry blossoms, marking and stitching the Sashiko stitches, and thinking about an appropriate quilting design. 

Hopefully Lynne's Zen Garden quilt will be done by Christmas. I think it should given my rotation system. It should be done after a couple more rotations.



Curious about Daiwabo Taupe Fabrics and Sashiko? Try it, you'll like it!