Making the Greenhouse Quilt by Elizabeth Hartman

It is New Year’s Eve and for me, like many, a time for taking stock. 2021 has not been a great year … Covid has continued to cloud everything, making family time and travel difficult. On a personal level, it has been a tough year too - I lost two dear friends, way before their time and we also had to say goodbye to our beloved cat Basil who has been with us for 18 years and has been so much part of our family’s story. Earlier this week, I attended the funeral of one of these friends and it was truly heart breaking. She was a sewing buddy and her partner said to me … “I look across our shared office/sewing space and the all the stuff is there…boxes of fabric, sewing machines and it is all just silent”. This morning I woke up and thought ‘I am here’ … another day that I can see the sunshine and rain clouds and another day to do so many things. I don’t want to dwell on this, except to say that I saw a quote recently that said ‘Time is our most precious resource on earth’ and it certainly is. The joy of ‘making’ will never leave me and today I am writing about the last quilt finish of the year and it is a supremely joyful one in every way Making the ‘Greenhouse’ quilt by Elizabeth Hartman was always going to be an epic project. I made the small wall hanging version a couple of years ago and it looks very striking. It is cheerful and a lovey greeting every morning beside the kitchen.

You can read about that here if you want to know more. Much as I love this, I always felt it was a bit of a cop out and always planned to make the real thing (if you know what I mean). This year I have been trying to use up some of my enormous stash of fabric and I have had these Amy Butler fabrics for a very long time. I think, in some rather other worldly way, really they were always destined for this quilt pattern, long before I introduced them to each other. With a bolt of pineapple fabric for the backing, the whole project was just crying out to me in the sewing room and I decided as autumn approached that it would had some colour and lightness to the season. I added in some linen fabrics for the flower pots and the odd splash of solid colour and it all looked as if it would be perfect for this pattern.

I would say that this pattern does look really rather daunting at first glance, which is probably why I made the smaller one first. It looks like a lot of small piecing and it is. However, the thing is to be organised and work on one set of blocks at a time. In the large quilt there are 9 blocks for each of the 5 different cacti. I found the best way to tackle it was to pick the cacti for the week and aim to make the 9 blocks. You can do all the cutting at once, which helps to clarify your fabric choices and then all the piecing, using chain piecing to help speed things up. After using this system for the first batch of blocks, it suddenly didn’t seem so daunting. I was thinking 5 weeks to do all the blocks, one week to put them together!

LOL! Of course that was way optimistic (but then again I am always optimistic) and the thing is to not be hassled and put yourself under pressure. Everyday stuff gets in the way of sewing, but it doesn’t matter… it is how it is supposed to be. However, my idea of working on a batch at a time definitely paid off and the blocks soon started accumulating.

The fabrics are just so lovely and as soon as I began I felt how much they reflect Amy Butler’s lovely book ‘Midwest Modern’. This is one of my favourite and most drooled over books in my collection and it always cheers me up to look at the images of how vintage can meet modern with a fresh, bright look.

By the second batch of blocks I was really enjoying mixing and matching the fabrics. I redesigned and refurnished our house several times over in my mind too!!!! The graphic design on the fabrics really has a vintage mid century vibe and I absolutely love them. It was starting to become a rather exciting project.

It seems like the blocks are complicated, but if you work on one style at a time, you get into a rhythm and they whip up in no time.

Assembling the quilt was the best fun. It took a while to make sure that colours and patterns weren't repeated too close to each other and get the overall look right. One it was all together though it was just gorgeous and I have to say it is just a really beautiful quilt pattern. I pressed it and layered it with the backing and then…..

…. I have to confess that once I got to this point, I hung the quilt over the bannisters to settle. This was in part because it was so big and heavy but also I had not the first idea how I was going to quilt it. I looked on instagram as the quilt has it’s own hashtag, but of course, many people use a long arm quilter for this part and although I have my Juki sewing machine, I was a bit concerned at how this might work out. It stayed there for over a month, but finally, driven by the idea that this was the final project of the year, I set to work on the quilting. In the end, I opted for just a straight diagonal double line using a walking foot and marking each line with a hera marker to make a crease. It was hard work, I won't deny that and I had to keep getting up and pressing it and pacing a little and then stitching the next line. It took me 5 days to finish it and I was mighty relieved. I know it is not fancy quilting but it doesn’t matter on a quilt with such eye catching fabrics and design.

Using my Juki makes light work of quilting and I cannot recommend this machine enough. For my full review of this piece of kit click here.

I decided on a scrappy border for the quilt to use up some of the left over fabrics and they always look so pretty anyway,

As I like to give all my quilts names and I don’t actually have a greenhouse, as I sewed, I found all sorts of names came to mind with this one…’Flower Power’ and ‘Carnaby Street’ were two of my favourites, but in the end, I called it Basil’s garden, because in November we lost him and I miss him everyday in the sewing room and also because he loved to smell the flowers in the garden. I made a label using cross stitch, as I usually do and it just completed the whole project….and set it in it’s time.

When you finish a big project like this…especially one that you have wanted to make for a long time, the satisfaction is immeasurable. Every time I look at it, I feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that brings me a lot of happiness. This is the real joy of a hobby like this and I truly believe that being creative, whether it is painting or ceramics or sewing or cooking or gardening, is the way to find peace and calm within yourself. It has been a great way to finish up the year in the sewing room and I am prodigiously proud of this quilt.

So as the year draws to a close and I put together my list of wishes and aspirations for the new year, I feel I have a lot to consider. My goals of attaining a more sustainable life will be popping up here with some ideas… starting with all the left over material I have from this project… I have plans…

But most importantly of all, I just want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read my tiny little patch of cyberspace, which brings me so much pleasure to work on and wish you all a happy and positive beginning for a brand New Year.

See you soon, Love Ruby xx