Sunbonnet Quilters Wall Hanging

For my birthday last September, my oldest daughter made up a bunch of redwork embroidery pieces featuring sunbonnet ladies doing various phases of quilting.  She got her patterns from Quilting Bee Designs.  I chose five of the panels to make this wall hanging.

I spent months looking for fabric that I thought would complement the embroidery but not overwhelm it.  I found three pieces at Fabric Shack in Waynesville, Ohio, that I thought would work well.  Then, I tried out some blocks, again not wanting to detract from the embroidery.  I wasn’t happy with anything until I got this book for Christmas.

There were 111 vintage blocks to choose from and in leafing through the book, The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt”, on Christmas Eve, I was immediately drawn to one called, “Flower Garden Path”. The book has a CD to print out templates for sampler blocks which are 6″ but I wanted 9″ blocks, so I used my Electric Quilt 6 software to re-draw the pattern and print it out for rotary cutting in the 9″ size.

I machine-pieced the blocks and put the quilt top together.  It’s a rather time-consuming block to sew, but I like the way it seems to frame the redwork panels.

I do only very simple machine quilting and was happy that my daughter offered to hand-quilt this piece.  Her beautiful stitching was just what the quilt needed

…and we liked the idea of vintage buttons in the center of the pieced blocks.

I made a scrappy patchwork backing and scanned recent pictures to print on the label.

It makes a nice, cheery wall hanging for my living room.