May Roses and Pansies Completed

This post is the follow-up quilting of the assembly of the May Roses and Pansies post from 8/14/25. This is the second banner I have completed from the Shabby Fabrics' Pieceful Patchwork series.

Pansies
Full, four-petaled motifs would fill in the block proper nicely. This motif is one on my go-to choices, I used it on my June Strawberries quilt post dated 9/6/25. As for the two HSTs with leaves, I wanted to add parallel lines to look like veining. Learning from my strawberry blossom post, I took a best guess at the direction of veins running from the source stem  and made the parallel lines vertical on the lower leaf and horizontal on the upper leaf. The directionality is somewhat camouflaged by the gingham fabric but a least I know I made a somewhat logical decision.

Roses
Undecided on how to quilt the yellow rose, I did the leaves first while waiting for inspiration to hit me.  For the central stem of each leaf, I sewed the spine from corner to corner, even though this deviated from a 45 degree line. This skewed approach saved me from having to deal with weird corner voids and let the veins radiate horizontally and vertically from the central spine. I used the pindots as a quasi-guide and free-formed the squiggles. For the white background however I was stricter and spaced the diagonals equidistant with the aid of a ruler. My final "aha" moment was for the yellow rose. I remembered I owned Amanda Murphy's Good Measure Every Daisy template set of four flower sizes. I quilted the largest one first, and then thought I'd insert the smaller ones concentric within. When I tried to outline the next one down in size, the template slipped and slid all over and was hard to control. Hmmm. The largest one had been manageable with the non-slip backing it came with. I picked out the sloppy mess. Then I added some extra sandpaper grippers to the back of the third one down in size and it worked beautifully. I decided not to press my luck with the second largest and the smallest. My bamboo batting can be quilted as spaced out as 8 inches so two concentric daisies were sufficient.

Here are the rulers I used for the rose and pansy blocks. I am not a slave to a specific brand. They all have their strong points. I rarely use the large HQ Right Angle ruler to guide my stitches. It is just too large for my hand to hold securely while stitching on my sit-down HQ Sweet Sixteen long arm. But it is great for setting right angles and I can use just the corner for zig zags on borders. I used it to mark my position where my point fell on the side edges of the rose block. I used the shorter Angela Walter SLIM ruler for stitching the actual straight lines. It has a gripping back and, with markings both in white and black, it is very versatile. Though hard to see in the photo, Slim also has 45 degree markings that help me stay tilted just the right amount throughout my diagonal grid. Also shown are the two sizes I used of Amanda Murphy's Daisy four template set.

The next photo is a quick comparison of the quilting patterns I chose for the two flowers. Sashing and borders are yet to be stitched.

Sashing and Borders
The inner sashing is rather narrow but leaving it without stitching seemed unfinished. Plus the sashing is a very dark purple, and I thought white thread would be distracting and purple thread ... why bother since it would not show up? As a compromise, I stitched a few arcs, six per side of a block or basically half the 3x3 setting. These arcs I stitched using the blocks themselves as a uniform spacing tool. I did use the curved edge of a HQ Versatool ruler for aid in sewing smooth contours and uniform sizing. Any curve would have sufficed but this one was a convenient size for my hand. For the mini floral print outer border, I stitched free form wishbones, referring to Angela Water's YouTube guide Machine Quilting Border Corners to navigate around the corners.

Finishing Details
I added my grosgrain ribbon labels. I also added the hanging sleeve before attaching my binding. On the Strawberries kit for June, I made the sleeve in the same fabric as the binding per the instructions. It shows up rather glaringly on the the back. For the June kit, I made the hanging sleeve out of the same fabric as the backing. Enough extra backing fabric was provided in the kit that I could do so. The sleeve is well camouflaged along that upper edge; and, by the way, so is my FMQ on the backing. I much prefer this same fabric option and will repeat making the sleeve out of the backing fabric whenever there is enough. I intend to make other months of these Shabby Fabric Pieceful Patchwork kits.

Voila! Another month of Pieceful Patchwork banners is completed. It is shown in the next photo hanging on a special heart scroll holder.

I thoroughly enjoy these 31" x 31" whimsical, interesting kits from Shabby Fabrics. They give me a reasonably sized opportunity to practice my FMQ, while granting me the satisfaction of quickly completing a project. There is enough repetition to get better, but not enough repetition to get bored.