Back in  the summer of 2012 Michele from the Quilting Gallery started a Quilt-Along aimed at beginner quilters.  Although I'm not a beginner I had never made a sampler quilt and had never taken part in a mystery quilt. I thought this quilt-along would be a good opportunity to do both of those things and to refresh some skills and learn others.  When I first started quilting we all used cardboard templates to draw around and scissors to cut out fabric, roller cutters, cutting mats and specialist rulers had not become the norm.  

I hoped that by following the quilt-along I would learn some new to me  techniques that are standard practise to quilters these days.  Also I planned to see if I could use my AccuQuilt Go! to cut pieces accurately and quickly.  I decided to make three quilts in total, one using techniques I was familiar with, one using the instructions given by Michele and one using the AccuQuilt Go! for as many blocks as possible.  I started by making the blocks using Michele's instructions.

The individual blocks were

I thoroughly enjoyed making the blocks each week and joining in with the discussions about the quilt-along on Flickr many people posted weekly pictures of their blocks and it was fascinating to see how different the end results were when all of us started from the same place.  The three sets of blocks I made all look very different.  This one is made from fabric I already had in my stash and the link between the blocks was flowers.  All the blocks have flower fabric in them and most of the blocks have two flower fabrics of different scales.  The second set of blocks is also made from fabric in my stash and is a scrappy blue quilt and the third is fabric purchased especially for the quilt-along and is called Dandelion Daydreams by Maywood Studios.  because a lot of the flower fabric is directional I spent a lot of time making sure the pieces were cut and sewn together the right way up.   

After completing all the blocks for all three quilts I needed to take a break from the project.  The break went on for a lot longer than I anticipated.  I found myself worrying about making choices for borders, scared of the quilting process and generally finding excuses not to move forward with finishing the quilts.

For this quilt, once all the effort of keeping the fabric in the blocks the right way round was completed, it looked to me as though it was a typical English country garden and so when I found some fabric that continued the theme I knew I had the right border fabric to finish this quilt.  Once again I had to make sure the fabric was cut and attached so that it is all the same way up but it was worth the effort as the border really compliments the blocks.

I then had a few panicked moments over the possibility of ruining everything while trying to quilt it on my domestic sewing machine.  Eventually I came to my senses and remembering that the object for this year is to finish things and applying the maxim that done is better than perfect I took a deep breath,put the quilt top under the sewing machine and free motioned it.

It is far from perfect but it is done.  At the moment it hangs on a wall and I'm the only person who sees wonky quilting and not matching seams.  

Now I just need to finish the other two quilt tops.