Reinventing the Secret Garden

In 2014 I did a BOM called The Secret Garden. I started blogging about it in 2015, and I actually haven't finished writing about the process of finishing this project. I have covered 11 of the 12 blocks. I haven't written anything - yet - about the sashing.

If you have followed my commentary on the monthly blocks you probably realize that I don't like this quilt very much. I especially didn't like it after I did the sashing. I will write about that eventually.

But I am going to skip over that part for now, and talk about Day 1 of a 3-day workshop I am attending. The instructor was Rayna Gillman, from the East Coast. The name of the workshop is Cinderella Quilts! Reinventing the UFO.  (Quilters tend to have a lot of UFO's - UnFinished Objects.) As soon as I heard about this workshop, I knew I wanted to learn how to take unfinished projects and ugly projects and turn them into gorgeous, finished pieces of art. Rayna's work is beautiful, and I would like to try to tap into my artistic side (if I have one) and see what I can come up with. As Rayna says, if you don't like it, it can't get any worse, so don't be afraid to cut it up and experiment.

Rayna shows us how she made some of her "What-was-I-thinking?" blocks into fabulous pieces

I started with three blocks from the nearly-finished Secret Garden

The first step is to fearlessly grab your rotary cutter (by the handle, please) and slice up the sacrificial blocks. There are no rules, no measuring, no using a straight edge. Just start cutting.

This wasn't a photography class, and so I did not learn how to take photos with accurate color values. What you see below is not very true to the actual colors, but you can get the idea.

The first few pieces go up on my very first "design wall."

More pieces

Starting to sew the pieces together

There are 4 strips from Secret Garden lurking in here

After sewing all of the pieces together I squared it up a little and thought about what else it needed.
















I decided to cut it into thirds. After the shock of cutting up a block I had spent time on and effectively ruining the whole Secret Garden quilt, it was not as awful to cut up the piece I just made. I  tried flipping one of the pieces but I didn't like the way that looked, so I kept them with the same orientation but shuffled the order. I think that added a LOT of interest and movement to it.

That's as far as I got. It was a long day. Tomorrow I will decide how it should be finished how I want to finish it. No rules, remember?

And I will start on a companion piece.

Rayna has all kinds of helpful tricks. I'm not going to give them all away. You'll have to take her class or buy her book. Link to Rayna's Book

So many opportunities to recycle