Victorian Crazy Quilt, Garden block

For a while now I have been playing with the idea of creating my own fabric. With my husband encouraging me to do another Victorian block, I thought that this would be a nice time to experiment with that as well.

I started with a piece of white bridal organza and sprinkled on snippets of cut up rayon threads and pearl cotton. I scrunched some lime green tulle and placed it over the top. Then I used a piece of tear away stabilizer and drew a one inch grid on the diagonal. I pinned it in place over the tulle.

I then took it to the machine and sewed over all the diagonal lines I had drawn.

And then it was time to remove the stabilizer. It came off nice and clean without too much trouble.

With the stabilizer gone I had a nice piece of fabric to work with. I backed it with some cream colored felted wool, and   placed it on my cutting mat. With the help of rulers I positioned a beautiful lace around the outside to create a border on my quilt. Then I covered the entire piece with another layer of white bridal tulle that had a little sparkle. With all the layering in place, I stitched over the lace with white thread to hold it down where I wanted it to stay.

I wanted to do a little machine quilting, so I free hand stitched rows of feathers on some of the diagonal stitching lines with blue and lime green thread. This extra sewing helped to hold everything in place.

With the quilt trimmed to size, I stitched an eighth of an inch from the outside edge. You can see the white organza showing thru in places and also the various threads under the layers of tulle.

Once the fabric was stable, I was able turn my attention the hand embroidery work. Following the diagonal lines that I had sewn on the base fabric, I used various embroidery stitches and pearl cotton threads.

My approach to this project was a little different than a traditional Victorian block. Since I didn’t have the seam lines to follow, because the block was not a pieced block, I followed the diagonal lines I had stitched when I first made my fabric base.

Here you can see the layers of the different stitches I used.  

This is how the block looked when the stitching was finished.  Now it is time for the really fun part of this project.

I used hand quilting threads to sew the little beads in place. Since I didn’t have the backing fabric of the quilt in place yet, I didn’t have to worry about hiding any threads when I embroidered and then sewed the beads in place.  

I had some really tiny glass seed beads so I added a small cluster of grapes.

I love how this section came together. Upon searching in my bead collection, I found these glass heart beads with purple swirls. They were perfect for the center of the flowers.  

When I thought I had come to the end of beading and embellishing, it was time to take care of the edge of the block. I removed the machine stitching I had sewn on to hold the edge together with my rotary cutter and resized the quilt. I added another layer of felted wool and fused it in place from the back of the quilt with Misty Fuse. I then fused my backing fabric in place using the same procedure. The edge of the backing fabric was trimmed to one inch from the edge of the quilt.  

I then rolled the binding to the front and pinned it in place.

Now just a little hand sewing and the project is done.

Here is the finished block. There is so much to look at throughout the quilt. It is truly a feast for the eyes!