This post is the followup quilting of the assembly of the strawberry wall hanging post from 7/8/25. Travel to Oklahoma and Visitors from Colorado stalled its progress somewhat but most of the delay was my indecision on how to quilt it. I was pretty clear on what I wanted to do with the strawberry blossoms, but the strawberries themselves did not speak as loudly to me.
Strawberry Blossoms
Full, four-petaled motifs would fill in the block proper nicely and two-petal half motifs along the outer edges would complete the look. I was unsure how to navigate the corners and put in half size four petal motif which I did not like (second photo). Later it occurred to me I did not have to change the scale, just the number of petals. I know the adage that to be a better quilter it is wiser to ignore the little goofs ... wiser to get better at quilting rather than get better at picking out. In this particular case though, I did pick that tiny motif out in favor of a same scale one petal, quarter motif.
As for the squares with leaves, I wanted to add parallel lines to look like veining. One of my goofs here I left in. Another I had no choice but to pick out. On the left, the gingham square leaf is "upside down" looking at the vein directions. I did convince myself that the mis-directionality gets lost in the two-tone plaid of the gingham print. If it bugs me, I can always pick it out and fix it later. The one on the right I caught myself in one leaf when I had forgotten the center line to act as a spine. Not only would this not look like leaf veining, but the error really shows up on the solid fabric. I took the time to pick out and re-quilt that leaf.
As an alternative to having a plan, I chose a "decide as you go" approach. As a no brainer but still moving forward I quilted parallel diagonals in the white background around the strawberry. I needed ideas for FMQing the sawtooth star inside the strawberry and I found inspiration with Angela Walters. She treated each pair of triangles as a diamond-like parallelogram. I sewed straight lines as in Angela's sample but in the future I might make them arcs.
The inner sashing were plain zig zags and I could use the fabric as my guidelines. The outer border was graced with a single line of scallops using my HQ Mini Scallop Ruler. Less is more; also, less is conveniently lazy.
I embroidered my two labels and attached them to the back corners of the wall hanging. On the left are my initials, year of completion, and the month the quilt represents; the unimaginative name I gave the quilt is on the right.
Here is the strawberry quilt, finished at, 31" x 31". I splurged and bought the heart scroll holder. Initially I balked at having to pay an additional shipping charge because of its length. I caved and mollified myself, reasoning that I planned to make this wall hanging for several other months' kits and the shipping cost could be shared by those future wall hangings. I was already getting the kits and holder at a discounted sale price from Shabby Fabrics. Waiting within my stash I have the kits for April, May, and August and the pdf patterns for February, March, and July. So far September does not have a huge appeal to me for kit or pattern. That heart scroll holder will get used.
