Secret Garden Challenge!

You may know by now that Sandra and I do at least two challenges a year. This means that we both make the same pattern and enjoy the chills and thrills of a new quilting creation together. For the past couple years, we have been including an applique quilt in the challenge.

The Secret Garden, pattern by Esther Aliu, took us about a year to complete. This is a beautifully designed and balanced applique project inspired by the book The Secret Garden, by the American author Frances Hodgson Burnett. (And, yes, it was made into movie in 1993!) I detailed the making of this quilt in earlier blogs, but today is just a look at our two challenge projects.

I started mine first, in March of 2022 and completed it in May 2023. Of course, I had my auto immune diagnosis in Jul 2022, so this quilt has been part of that journey as well. Sandra started hers in the fall of 2022 and completed in the summer 2023.

We selected the pattern and then decided to do the pattern at 75% of size to complete a large wall hanging size, rather than bed size.

Sandra chose to use a pale grey grunge background and bright, robin’s egg blue grunge for the borders and baskets. The story blocks are made using batik scraps and layer cake squares with her blue grunge. Sandra added her own twist to both the interior and exterior borders, adding to the drama of the composition. She also added machine embroidery elements to both borders.

I decided to use my fabric stash, which was challenging given the fabric requirements. This is why I used both the denim colored grunge and the off white grunge for background; I simply did not have enough of either one. I was making everything work hard! All the story elements are made using batik stash.

A funny thing happened on the way to making a wall hanging, though. A friend fell in love with this and asked me to expand it into a queen size quilt! I agreed, which meant adding a series of borders to enlarge it to 94″. The batik in first round of border and also used is the corners, is from stash. A narrow grunge border separates each border section.

The second round of border allowed me to use up quite a bit of left over layer cake sections and some stash yardage used in the top. I repeated applique elements from the top, including some leftover applique pieces, brought together with a vine traveling through the rectangles.

Our final, quilted Secret Gardens.This is our “biggest” and most complex challenge to date. Usually we complete a challenge in the year we select it, but this one needed additional time to complete. What about next year’s challenge? Stay tuned!

Happy quilting!

Lennea