No Flies in my Romance Garden

When Sherry from Powered by Quilting asked me to make a quilt using her signature line of Island Batik fabric, I was excited to do so.

Island Batik fabrics are always beautiful and Sherry is great to work with.

I got to choose what project to make, so I decided to update one of my old quilt patterns – No Flies in my Garden. It seems appropriate because the name of the fabric collection is Romance Garden.

So the quilt I made is called No Flies in the Romance Garden.

Sorry about the photo bomb in the video at 4:39!

The Fabric

Romance Garden is a beautiful collection of fabrics in purple, green, pink and blue. It is full of garden motifs including flowers, leaves, butterflies and dragonflies.

I received a bunch of fat quarters in purples and blues, vibrant green fabric for the chains and white fabric for the background.

The Blocks

This quilt pattern is made with two basic blocks – chain blocks and shoo fly blocks.

The shoofly quilt block is a simple nine patch block that has half-square triangles on the corners.

The shoo fly blocks alternate with chain blocks that frame them.

The Layout

One of the things that I like best about this pattern is that it has a “built in” border. It looks like there is a border on the quilt, but it is actually part of the blocks.

It looks complicated, but it is actually not difficult to do.

The Quilting

I finished the quilt with both straight vertical line quilting and straight diagonal line quilting.

This quilting framed the chains and almost made it look like the shoofly blocks were set on point.

The Pattern

The original pattern for No Flies in my Garden was a smaller quilt, but this one is 81″ x 81″.

I have updated the pattern to include this larger size and a smaller lap size, so there are now three size options.

Other Quilts

Thanks to Sherry Shish (Powered by Quilting) and Island Batik for letting me participate and giving me such beautiful fabric to work with!

Be sure to check out what these other designers made with this great fabric:

• March 1 – Sherry Shish
• March 1 – Leanne Parsons
• March 2 – Kate Starcher
• March 3 – Jen Strauser
• March 5 – Sally Williams / Sally Jewell
• March 6 – Brianna Roberts
• March 7 – Jennifer Fulton
• Match 8 – Anja Clyke
• March 9 – Tammy Silvers
• March 10 – Kathryn LeBlanc
• March 11 – Sarah Vanderburgh
• March 12 – Sherry Shish