Not Your Mughal Garden – The Quilt

 By definition, Mughal gardens – built by the Mughal emperors in the Persian style and are ‘rigidly formal’, says Wikipedia. They also have a ‘highly disciplined geometry’, it goes on to elaborate. 

One look at the quilt below, and you know why it could never be your Mughal garden!

Tana’s Quilt – Not Your Mughal Garden – no, not by a long stretch!
 

 This quilt – made for my daughter, Tana, has been in the making for three and a half years now. It started off as a block party but I got involved in other projects… My resolution this year is to complete all my UFOs( unfinished objects for those uninitiated into quilting lingo), before I start any new quilt. I also wanted to practice more free motion quilting before I start quilting my Round the Year quilt.

The quilt was built up in 5 quilt as you go (QAYG) panels, joined together with the 1″ red sashing in front and no sashing at the back. It needed a bit of calculation, but turned out fine. It is difficult to make out that this is QAYG, which I like!

In several of these blocks, I just followed the floral print outlines, to gain confidence. I am quite happy with the result! Here are the individual blocks and the quilting on each. What do you think?

Block 1   

Tana’s Quilt – Block 1
  
The quilting followed the print pattern, as in most blocks

 Block 2
 
Block 2 and Block 1 formed one qayg panel.
  
 Block 3

 

Blocks 3 and 4 were another panel, quilted together
 
 
I quilted spirals on the flowers
 
Block 4

 

The fabric for block 4 was a synthetic mix and gave me much trouble!
  
To compound the problems , a square was added to the backing fabric!
 
Block 5

 

This block was the same difficult fabric as block 4…
 
  

…this also had a square at the back!
 Block 6

 

…this was in the same panel as Block 5
 
 
Again, followed the print pattern in quilting
 
Block 7

 

blocks 7, 8, 9 were a single vertical panel backed with red fabric.
 
 
I quilted flowers to join the dots
 
Block 8

 

This was the centre block in the qayg panel
  
Quilted following the printed flowers, more or less!
 
Block 9

 

A pretty print here!
 
 
this was the first block i quilted – pretty satisfying!
 
Block 10

Blocks 10, 11 and 12 formed the bottom qayg panel – block 10 was different from the others!

 

followed the print pattern! this is pretty!
 
Block 11

 

block 11
 
 
tried some free motion quilting roses…
  

Block 12

 

block 12
 
 
poppies from tute by lori kennedy of the inboxjaunt.com
 
 Here are some more pics of the whole quilt!

 

The back ! it is actually prettier than the front i think!
  
Here’s another view of the back. Block 1 is at top left corner.
 
I finished this quilt about a couple of weeks ago. I am certainly more confident about free motion quilting at the end of this exercise! Happy quilting to you all till I share with you what I am doing right now. 

Author: Mads

In alphabetical order: daughter, mother, painter, philosopher, poet, quilter, seeker, wife...

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