TBT--Winter Rose Garden

It's time for another addition of Throw Back Thursday over at A Quarter Inch From the Edge.  On the first Thursday of every month, Jenn hosts a linky party for us to throwback to quilts from our quilty past.

Today I bring to you  the Winter Rose Garden quilt.  I laugh as I type that because there is nothing winter or rose garden about my quilt.  Until just a few minuets ago, I have always referred to this as the quilt in the living room.  When I decided to write about this particular quilt I figured it was time to find the real name of the quilt.  For that I had to knock down some cobwebs in my head and remember where it came from.  The pattern came from the Fons & Porter magazine Easy Quilts Spring 2011.  I still have the magazine somewhere, but the last I remember something got spilled on it and I put it in a safe place.  Thank goodness for internet search engines and photographic memory.

I fell in love with Moda's October line when I found a bolt of the black fabric with the tiny orange/red berries on it.  I had to have it.  I bought several yards and later a charm pack.  (The charm pack became my Falling Leaves Quilt)  When I saw the Winter Rose Garden pattern in the magazine I thought the wide boarders would be great for showing off those berries.  Still pretty new to quilting, I tried to match the yellow and red to the berries.  Not sure I quite got it right, but you have to start somewhere.  Once the top was pieced it set in my back room for several years just hanging out.

After I finally started tackling free motion quilting, I thought that at roughly 54" squarish, this quilt would be perfect to try to custom quilt.  So I tried to stick with things I knew; ribbon candy, continuous curves, straight lines, and back and forth lines.

I used my walking foot to do the cross hatching in the center squares and wanted something easier.  So in the corner black squares I opted for this curvy flower design.

In the inner black boarder I attempted a vine and leaf pattern.  I would love to say I 100% free handed this but I didn't.  I traced the pattern from the book Quilting Dot to Dot: Patterns for Today's Machine Quilter by Cheryl Barnes on to Glad Press and Seal and placed it on the boarder.  I quilted right over the lines on the plastic wrap.  I loved how it turned out, but it was a pain in the behind getting all the sticky wrap off the stitches.

You can see the stitches better from the back of the quilt.

Since it was one of the first non-allover designs I had attempted and there were many stops and starts, I feared that my stitches might not be as secure as they should be.  But it is still going strong after many washes and getting used daily.  Even Newton loves being near the quilt.

That concludes my throwback for this Thursday.  I hope you will pop over to A Quarter Inch from the Edge and check out all the other cool throwbacks today.  You can check out my previous TBT's; A Quilt For My Mom, That Time It Rained Babies and Hind Sight is 20/20is--A Baby Quilt.

Come join the party!!  Today I'm linking up with; Can I Get A Whoop! Whoop! at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Richard and Tanya Quilts