Hydrangea has its origins in Japan where it is called “Morning Glory”. The city of Nagasaki took it as its symbol.

Coming back from Brittany  where they were in full bloom, I decided to choose  a variety of hydrangea called “Hydrangea Macrophylla” with a crown of flowers around a flat center with small buds. I also wanted to work with the laguage of flowers (19th century or Victorian period) and use its symbolism

I have at home vintages plates using the language of flowers as a decoration and I also ordered Sheila Pickles’ book “The Language of Flowers” as an inspirational source.

Recently, following Hilary Beattie on her blog I discovered she was using the same theme working on a series of small quilts. They were on display at Festival of Quilts.

I have used her technique to organise my fabric and create the background.

Technique & material :

I started to fuse a light bondaweb on the batting (a thin cotton one). I removed the paper and started to arrange my fabrics on the batting, layering, folding, making inserts when necessary.

When satisfied with my arrangement I ironed everything in place.

All my fabrics are vintage pieces of bed sheets and pillow cases from  my family that I have hand dyed. It is a heavy cotton.

Then the background was heavily quilted. I have used text explaining the symbolism of hydrangea, lines and grids.

I have made a rubbing with a real leaf and stencils from real flowers. The main drawing (head of flowers) is a copyright free image from internet. I have used thread sketching  with black cotton thread for both the leaf and flowers working directly on the tracing paper.

On the left, the flowers are stencilled with inktense pencils and fabric medium.