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I created the large background garden using a king-sized flannelette sheet as my design wall. The edge to edge squares made the garden seem enormous, but once the seams were sewn, it was reduce to a more manageable size. An open gate was drafted to size on graph paper, introducing the rules of perspective.
Machine piecing, hand reverse appliqué and hand and machine quilting
*I started to hand quilt the very visible areas of sky first but, as a competition deadline loomed, I had to get a move on. Machine texturing, with cotton (50) threads that matched the background, helped me to speed up the quilting process. A busy background was very forgiving to my fairly inept attempts at machine quilting! But if you don't try, then you never learn.