Mother's Garden- a hexie quilt

June was my month again for DGS and I chose this Wanta Fanta block from Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts.  She is doing a whole series of different blocks that are perfect for bees such as this. You might want to check them out. There are some really neat ones in there that I'm pretty likely to use my next go-around.

 I had my circle-mates use blues and lights. Well, it's August now and I actually have the quilt top together and loaded on my longarm already. So pictures of that will be coming soon!

This quilt I'm sharing today is another collaboration with my Mom, sister, and me.  We like to make quilts together to give to family members as wedding gifts. But we only have about 3 unwedded cousins left, who do not seem to be in any hurry to get married, so we started making them to give to the oldest cousins who missed out on our quilts. Then we decided to give one to our aunts when they turned 65. (We just needed some reason to make a quilt!)

So anyway, Mom picked out this pattern called Mother's Garden from a book on hexies. 

It worked out really well since each person hand sewed a few flowers on their own, then when we got together, we just needed to piece the top together. Mom took it all home with her and stitched all the stems and flowers over the top. Then it's passed into my hands for the quilting.

My first step was to quilt the borders like the one in the book--a grassy looking design. I also quilted in the green stems as I went along.

Next, I changed to a cream thread and filled in the background with leaves off of the stems.

Each flower I did a bit differently.

And changed thread colors to match. Lots of stops and starts on this one!

We surprised Aunt Shirley with it recently and she loves it! I'd say it's time to get going on the next one!