June Strawberries Completed

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.

Strawberries
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 remaining components I impulsively quilted whatever caught my fancy and was within my skill set. Pebbles may have looked cute in the strawberry, but my pebbles are awful — not awesome, mind you — awful. Instead, in the RED area I opted for echoing the inner star and scalloping the outer edges. In the GREEN leaf areas, I placed arcs around the edges of each leaf at the top of the berry and squiggles at the top of the strawberry cap beneath the stem.

Sashing and Borders
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.

The Final Finishes
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.

The back shows the quilting. I followed the instructions exactly and hence the hanging sleeve is the same as the binding fabric. For the next kit I do, I believe there is enough backing fabric to make the sleeve out of the backing fabric instead and I think I will do that. This was a fun project and I look forward to working on playing with the other months.