I always find panels a little tricky. Do I use them as a focal point of a quilt and add block and/or borders around them? What do I do with them? I have admired the Hoffman Dream Big Floral panels for several years now. And I admire all of the quilters who use their embroidery machine to quilt each petal of the flower, but I am not usually a follower and I truly love having something a little different than the norm. I found this pattern Fractured Flowers by Cindi McCracken designs and thought I can do something with this. So, I visited one of my favorite local quilt shops and bought one Dream Big Floral Aurora panel and a great batik fabric that coordinated. And started pressing, cutting, & sewing, and pressing, cutting, & sewing and pressing, cutting, & sewing and pressing, cutting, & sewing……….
This was an easy sew-together block because it was a half-square log cabin. But I knew I could not make one wrong cut because if I did, I would have to purchase another panel (and these panels are not exactly cheap). So I turned off all electronics, televisions, and music (sometimes I get so into the music I start singing and dancing around and lose focus of the project at hand). Once I had cut all the strips I just needed to keep focused to make sure I was seeing the correct strip on the correct block, panel strips on the last round of batik strips, and batik strips on the last round of panel strips. As I said, this is just sewing half-square log cabin blocks but keeping the strips in the right order is not for the distracted quilter.
I cut and sewed and pressed and sewed some more and ended up with 2 big blocks. Then, another scary cut. Anytime I cut a sewed block I am always a little frightened, but it worked just like the pattern said. I sewed the cut pieces of one block onto the other block and there you have it. A very interesting and pretty quilt. Now I am an old-style quilter, so this took me a bit to fall in love with because my brain says you need a dark, light, and medium fabric, and this quilt definitely does not have that. So, I am learning that some of the old rules can be bent, and you can have a stunning result.
With one panel now made into a quilt, it was time to try it again. Back to the local quilt shop and another panel. This time I purchased a Dream Big Dance Teal panel. This panel did not have as many color variations, so I decided to add more interest by using a stripe fabric with it. I wanted all my stripes to be going the same way so I drafted the blocks on graph paper and cut them up just like I would when I cut and sewed them and to my amazement, the stripes all worked. Hooray, because I was afraid this was going to be a big pain and end up on the shelf of ‘never touch again in this lifetime.’
Panel quilt number two and now I can’t decide which one I like better. I love the richness of the Floral panel but it seems like there is a bit of whimsy Dance panel.
