Baltimore Birth Month-Flowers of the Year Quilt

This beautiful quilt showcases the twelve U.S. birth month flowers of the year. I’ve used a white background fabric and chosen softer colored batiks for the flowers for a romantic, vintage look. Each block has been sashed with 1” (2.5cm) wide white strips set off with coral cornerstones. A narrow border of small squares set on point frames the sashed blocks. The outer mitered corner

border is scalloped and adorned in opposing corners with a trailing vine composed of single elements from various blocks, most of which were edited slightly.

This quilt was designed, embroidered, and pieced by Lindee Goodall and quilted by awardwinning Tucson quilter, Nubin Jensen.

Throughout the last twelve months via the Echidna P.I.E. program, we’ve used designs from the Australian Birth Month Flowers of the Year series, five of which are also included in the U.S. group, to learn embroidery skills and create a project. Now we’ll use the appliqués from the U.S. flowers to make a quilt.

I’ve created two versions of the Baltimore Birth Month Flowers of the Year quilt. The Australian one uses vivid batiks on a black background with straight borders for a clean, contemporary quilt. Instead of an appliquéd border, I appliquéd the cornerstones. If you’d like something simpler than a mitered corner scalloped border with multiple design placements, you might prefer that one; instructions are available separately.

Echidna PIE was a series of monthly embroidery lessons based on the designs used in this quilt and was active from July 2014 through July 2015. Lessons and associated content are still available at EchidnaClub.com.au. If you’re brand new to embroidery, you may find them helpful for completing this quilt or expanding your knowledge and skill; they are not required.

These instructions are to complete the quilt and assume some basic embroidery skills. If you need more help, you can also visit LindeeGEmbroidery.com or my YouTube channel for a growing body of free content.

Skill Level

These instructions assume that you know how to do the following tasks:

• How to piece a quilt
• How to attach a mitered border
• How to bind a quilt
• How to stitch machine embroidered appliqué using precut fabric (See Echidna PIE Lesson 1, July 2014) or refer to the included Appliqué Basics PDF.
• How to combine embroidery designs in software (See Echidna PIE Lesson 5, Creating an Endless Border, November 2014)
• How to rehoop for precise design placement (See Echidna PIE Lesson 2, Perfect Placement Pointers, August 2014)

What’s Included

• Modified appliqué designs to recreate the border
• Appliqué templates for border designs (the actual appliqués have not changed but some have been mirrored)
• Pattern for scalloped border
• Instructions to complete the quilt as shown
• Applique Basics PDF file

A Word About Measurements

I measure stitches in metric (millimeters for density and stitch length or width) and most other measurements in imperial (inches, feet, and yards). Many of you work entirely in metric. For this project, I’ll put the measurements I actually used first and then the converted metric versions in parentheses.

For example, all my quilting rulers measure in inches so that’s what I use and my machine and embroidery software measures stitch lengths in millimeters. So, the instructions might read:

Cut strips to 2” (5.1cm) wide and stitch using a ¼” (6mm) seam with a 2.0mm stitch length.

Since meters are longer than yards by slightly more than 3” (8.6cm), I’ll simply round them off as even and the measurement will read “½ yd/m.”

Note About Links

In some cases, links to external web sites are included for more information on a technique or product. All the links were active at the time of writing but web sites can vanish and pages can change. If a link is no longer working, please let me know and then just use a search tool to see if the information can be found elsewhere.

Please read through all instructions before starting your project!

Baltimore Birth Month Flowers Quilt

Finished quilt size: approximately 45 x 54” (114 x 137cm)

Finished block size: 8 x 8” (20 x 20cm)

Feel free to adapt this pattern to your own tastes and quilting styles. If you want a larger quilt, consider setting the blocks on point or adding more or wider borders. The redwork versions of the design can quickly create additional blocks that can expand the size of your quilt with minimal effort.

Fabric

Yardage is based on 42” (107cm) wide fabric unless otherwise stated.

WOF=width of fabric

• Blocks: You’ll need to do some calculations.

Although each embroidered block is trimmed to a 9” (22.8cm) square, you will need extra fabric to allow for hooping. How much extra depends on the size of your hoop and your hooping method; you may need to allow as much as 18” (45.7cm) for each block. Do not precut your blocks smaller than 10” (25.4cm) before embroidering. This extra fabric may be needed if your design is sewn off center or crooked. Also, embroidery itself tends to shrink and distort the fabric; you will still need to true up your block no matter how carefully you embroider. By trimming your blocks when you are ready to piece your quilt, you can preserve a crisp edge on your fabrics. To make the quilt as shown, you’ll need enough fabric for 12 blocks plus any practice or replacement blocks.

• Appliqués: Fat quarters or scraps in your choice of colors
• Sashing Strips: ⅜ -½ yd/m (white)
• Sashing cornerstones: 1 fat quarter (coral/peach)
• Pieced border:
• ¼ yd/m for diamonds (green)
• ½ yd/m for background (white)
• Scalloped border: 2¼ yd/m (white)
• Binding: 1 yd/m (green)
• Backing: 4 yd/m (green, same as binding)

Cutting

• Sashing Strips: 8 strips 1½” (3.8cm) x WOF cut into 31 strips 1½” x 9” (3.8 x 22.8cm) (white).
• Sashing Squares: 1 strip 1½” (3.8cm) x WOF cut into 20 squares 1½ x 1½” (3.8 x 3.8cm) (coral/peach).
• Pieced border: .
• 5 strips, 1¼” (3.2cm) x WOF for the colored diamonds (green).
• 10 strips, 1¼” (3.2cm) x WOF for the alternate color (white).
• Pieced border corner stones: 4 squares 1½ x 1½” (3.8 x 3.8cm) (green).
• Scalloped border: 4 strips 11” (28cm) wide by length of the side + 24” (61cm) (extra fabric is required for hooping and embroidering the mitered corners, this length will be quite generous). I cut my borders on the length of the fabric instead of crosswise to avoid seams and for stability. Unless you’re embroidering each flower element individually in a small hoop, you’ll need to float the border strips for embroidering. I recommend starching the end you’ll be embroidering.
• Binding: Bias strips 2½” (6.35cm) x length of the perimeter plus 12” (30.5cm) (green)

Supplies.

• Designs: U.S. Birth Month Flowers of the Year appliqué designs

All the Birth Month Flowers of the Year blocks are interchangeable for size. Some flowers are designated for both the U.S. and Australia (March, April, June, November, December). Also, some of the flowers designated for Australia are alternates for the U.S. When I originally designed this quilt, it was for the U.S. and I chose flowers that would work well as appliqués and not look too much the same, such as Aster and Daisy.

• Threads and appliqué fabrics as desired
• Fusible web for appliqué
• Wash-Away stabilizer (I used wash-away tear-away)
• Basic quilting and embroidery supplies
• Liquid starch
• Optional: Temporary embroidery spray adhesive

Nice to Have

• Lightbox for precise placement
• PAL laser light

Fabric Preparation

All fabrics were washed and dried before cutting or stitching to preshrink.

Tips For Stitching Blocks

To conserve fabric—I would have needed to cut a 16” (40.6cm) square for each block for normal between-the-rings hooping—I cut my blocks to 10” (25.4cm) and heavily starched each block by dipping the cut blocks into full strength liquid starch and then smoothing each block out squarely and wrinkle-free on my cutting table to dry.

When “floating” projects rather than hooping, the fabric and stabilizer must be made as stable as possible. For stabilizer, I chose a wash-away product, which can either be something like Wash-Away or Sulky FabriSolvy (two layers) or a wash-away tear-away (one layer). Large straight sides on hoops allow for more slippage to occur. If your hoop does not securely hold the stabilizer when hooped by itself, an extra measure of security can be added with duct tape.

Simply tear some lengths of duct tape in half lengthwise and press onto the stabilizer on the back near the hoop edge then wrap up over the bottom and side of the hoop. As long as your hoop is clean, no sticky residue will remain.

For the fabric, starching stiffly is one measure I take, the second is basting. To get an accurate placement, I do a double-basting box process. The first baste is stitched directly onto the stabilizer as a placement guide. The second attaches the block to the stabilizer. I didn’t use any spray adhesives.

If your machine has a baste-in-the-hoop feature, now’s a great time to use it. If it doesn’t, then basting boxes can be added in a program like Embrilliance Essentials—just make each one a different color or program in a stop at your machine so that you can place the fabric after the first one sews.

I prefer adding basting boxes in software because I often make the box a different size when using it as a placement reference. When basting at the machine, it optimizes the baste to the bounding box perimeter of the design.

If you don’t have a large enough hoop to stitch the full-size block design, you’ll need to use one of the split versions to create the block. You’ll definitely need to rehoop for the border vines. When doing multiple hoopings, I try to use a piece of stabilizer that will accommodate all of the hoopings rather than to use multiple pieces of stabilizer. Pressing after each hooping to smooth out any creases is a good idea.

Design Preparation

There’s really no preparation for the blocks themselves. The borders will require some work to arrange the pieces properly.

There are 5 flower elements that comprise the border, which are included with these instructions. When looking at the upper right corner, designs on the short side are mirrored plus the first one on the short side is slightly rotated (#5). In the key following, you can see how these designs are numbered for the upper right corner. The lower left corner is a mirror image of the upper right.

When designing these border designs, I played with numerous individual elements pulled from the flowers and included with the monthly flower designs. After getting an arrangement I liked, I did some minor editing, which mostly consisted of lengthening the stems a bit and some other minor tweaks. This is much easier to do by the digitizer because the design elements can be manipulated as objects rather than stitches.

If you’d like to design your own border, use the “single” versions of the designs and add your own z-stitches as we did in the Echidna PIE Lesson 5, Creating an Endless Border, November 2014 or watch the YouTube video: Creating A Continuous Border with Embrilliance.

To stitch my borders, I combined as many as would fit in my hoop, matching the z-stitches and making sure the designs were ordered from the outer most point and progressing to the corner. It’s a good idea not to entirely max out your sewing field or you won’t be able to fine-tune the placement at the machine. For my machine, this meant I could sew the shorter side in one hooping, the longer side in two hoopings and finally the corner connecting element after the mitered seam was sewn.

Once you’ve combined your elements, you can delete extra z-stitches leaving only the first and last pair as needed.

I definitely recommend printing placement templates for the borders. I planned my placement so that the first flowers (outer most ones) are about 1¼” (3.2cm) from the pieced border. You’ll need to trial where to place everything so that the corner flower matches up with the two side borders and there is enough left over at each end to make the mitered corners.

Another tip is that rather than trying to remember to mirror the various placements, that you create mirrored versions and label them for the appropriate corner. After I created the elements for one corner, I duplicated, mirrored, and renamed them accordingly.

Assembly Instructions

Scant ¼” (6mm) seams used throughout for construction.

1. Embroider the blocks.

Embroider all the blocks and trim to size (9”/22.8cm square) making sure the design is centered.

2. Embroider the borders.

Preparing the designs as previously described will make stitching the borders easier. You’ll want to take extra care to make sure the designs are stitched in the correct direction and orientation because you’re working with a significant length of fabric and a mistake could cost you another trip to the fabric store for a couple more yards.

Perfect Placement Pointers was the subject of lesson 2 in the 2014 Echidna PIE series. I’ll recap a few things here but if you’re new to rehooping to build a larger continuous design, you might want to check that for more comprehensive instructions.

• Mark each border strip with a long center line for aligning each element and for checking straightness in the hoop. Please note that if you’re placing each design individually, this may not match actual guides on your template. I’ve used basting boxes sized to the border area to keep the centers aligned. A small hoop may not permit this.

When floating, I sometimes even mark an additional guide on my hooped stabilizer so that I can match my fabric accurately. If your hoop doesn’t have accurate guides, try this: Hoop your stabilizer and insert the hoop in the machine. Move the hoop using the controls so that the needle is at the top of the hoop (you may not be able to move the needle much if a large design is loaded for stitching) and sink the needle to make a mark in the stabilizer. Now move to the bottom of the hoop and repeat. Use these needle marks to draw a long placement line with a ruler and a fine line pencil.

• For proper visual layering, you’ll be working from the end-most flower to the corner. You’ll need to make sure you have adequate space at the end to create the mitered corner. I pressed over a diagonal at the end. You might want to fold a bit further away than the absolute end to give yourself a little leeway for placement and to allow for a bit of stitching distortion.

• Stitch the border designs, aligning the various elements carefully.

• When both sides of the corner are embroidered, recheck your placement of the connecting flower and, if necessary, make any adjustments for the mitered corner seam.
• Stitch the mitered corner seam to within ¼” (6mm) of the inside corner. Trim seam allowances to ¼” (6mm) and press open.
• Embroider the final design, matching the z-stitches. When the corner is completed, remove the z-stitches.

3. Piece the blocks and sashing.

• Alternating the cornerstones with the sashing strips, assemble and stitch five horizontal sashing rows.

• Join appliqué blocks into four rows of three blocks alternating each block with the remaining sashing strips.

4. Make the pieced diamond border.

Before you piece multiple strips, try a test with some 8” long (20.3cm) pieces. Stitch them for the first strip set and cut as described below and then piece together. Measure the vertical height of an interior diamond to make sure it measures 1” (2.5cm). If not, adjust your seam allowances to achieve this size.

• Using the 1¼” (3cm) strips, sew one white to each side of one green for a strip set. Press seam allowances toward the green. Cut strips into 1¼” (3cm) pieces.

• Rotate each cut piece 45° and stitch together as shown below, taking care to match seams and keeping seam allowances even. Press seams to one side.

• Measure the horizontal center of the quilt to get the length for the top and bottom pieced border. Measure the vertical center of the quilt to get the measurement for the two side borders.
• Piece a long enough strip for each side of the center of the quilt plus two more sections, which will be trimmed off when squaring off the ends. The number you need may vary from mine because if your seam allowances are off even one needle width from mine, this can translate into a significant difference over the length of the border due to the many seams. Do make sure that you match the number of diamonds on opposite sides. You may find that you can’t get an exact length match and that some easing is required.
• Trim off excess leaving ¼” (6mm) seam allowance above the points on the green diamonds.

• Add a cornerstone to each end of the top and bottom pieced border

• Attach pieced side borders to quilt. Then add top and bottom borders.

5. Attach the mitered corner outer borders to the quilt.

If you’ve followed along with the project instructions, you should have two opposing appliquéd corner border pieces, each with a mitered seam. You’ll now need to measure to determine the length for the extensions.

• Measure the horizontal center of the quilt to get the inside measurement for the top and bottom borders. You’ll need to subtract ¼” (6mm) to account for the seam allowance in the border corner that has been stitched. Mark this length on the corresponding border within the seam allowance.
• Measure the vertical center of the quilt to get the inside measurement for the two side borders. Repeat the process of marking the border.
• Mark a diagonal line ¼” (6mm) in from the marks for a seamline.

• Stitch mitered corners, leaving ¼” (6mm) open on the inside border side.
• Stitch the border to the quilt top.

6. Mark scalloped border for quilting but don’t cut!

Actual size templates in PDF format are included if you choose to use them. The template has been tiled onto multiple pages. Just print them, tape together, and trace onto your quilt top for a guide for quilting.

If your quilt is a different size from mine and you need help marking a scallop, watch this video: How to Make a Scalloped Edge on a Quilt.

Don’t cut the scalloped edge at this point; it’s easier to quilt with straight edges.

7. Quilt as desired.

I confess to being a chicken when it comes to the actual quilting and when I want a professional look, I send it to a professional. Fortunately we have quite a few good long arm quilters locally. To keep the two versions of the quilt as different as possible, I sent each one to a different quilter. I splurged on this one and sent it Nubin Jensen, who is well known for her intricate scrolls and feathers. The quilting she did on this project is simply stunning and if you get a chance to see this quilt at an event, be sure to check it out!

8. Create a label.</span<

My favorite font for creating quilt labels is Adine Script, which is available as a BX font for convenient use. You are creating an heirloom so let those who come in the future know who created it and when!

9. Add a hanging sleeve if desired.

10. Bind.

Applying binding to a scalloped border requires a little more effort than the standard rectangular border. If you’ve never done a scalloped border, here’s a good video: How to Make a Scalloped Edge on a Quilt.

I prefer to stitch my binding to the front of my quilt, fold to the back and then hand stitch.

I find this relaxing but feel free to use your own favorite technique. You will definitely need to cut your binding on the bias to accommodate the curved edges.

Summary

Quilts don’t have to be massive. Smaller wall-hanging sizes like this one are more easily completed before the boredom or overwhelm sets in. Obviously this is not a one day or even a weekend project. Set aside planning time to choose fabrics that you love and will work well together. Don’t rush, enjoy the process!

The pieced border will take quite some time as does the appliquéd scalloped border and while these add a special touch to this quilt, don’t feel like you have to do them because I did. Feel free to design your own variation.

It’s a Wrap!

One thing I love about this hobby is that there’s always something new to learn, some new technique, some new gadget. Discovering those things is what keeps the hobby new, fresh, and interesting. Plus, embroidery is just more fun when you know the tricks to getting good results!