Excited by my new hobby I decided to make some lap quilts for my mother and step-father, Stephen as Christmas presents. They have a lovely garden so I used that as my inspiration.

Stephen grows vegetables and herbs and l actually managed to find fabrics featuring veges. I soon learnt you could find almost anything you can think of on a fabric. I started collecting lots of novelty prints of all sorts of fun themes. You'll see lots of them in my next few quilts.


I used the Turning Twenty pattern in which you get the same number of fat quarters as blocks (usually 20, hence the name) and cut them each in the same way then swap bits around. I guess that's what they call stack and slash. It was a step up from squares and got me thinking about how measurements work, and gave me practice cutting more accurately. I thought 9 was a comfy lap size. The block size is 16 inches plus a 3 inch border so they came out to 54 inches square.

I really like the way the blues and purples work together.

I didn't take a photo of the backing fabric but I used the blue Martha Negley fabric with the vegetable stripes of peas, turnips and brussel sprouts.

Named simply "Stephen's Garden" I told him it would be nice on those cold Melbourne winter days to stay inside read the newspaper tucked up in his indoor garden.



Mum's parts of the garden are full, luscious and flowery. There's not a lot of contrast in this quilt but I wanted that almost over grown mass of blending bloomy look.




I also used the lotus flower fabric (aka Lake Blossoms) and lotus leaves by Kaffe Fasset in memory of the time when mum visited me in Sydney and I took her to the Botanic gardens where the lotus were in flower. She loved them so much she painted this painting.



Mum loves doing cryptic crosswords so I made an anagram for her quilt's name,
"Lotus Love/ Love U Lots."

Martha Negley features again on the back with this delicious fabric


I made these in October 2008 and as I was giving them as Christmas presents, and didn't think I could quilt them both in time, I sent them away to be longarm quilted by Maxine Sandry who had been recommended by a friend. It's such a treat to have them returned all nicely quilted.

Needless to say they loved their quilts. Stephen referred to it as a summer blanket and said he'd use his for sleeping under which lead me to make a bed size quilt for him. I'll show case it in a future post.