I relished the theme for our third quilt of ‘Gardens’ a subject quite close to my heart, I love my garden, not especially the hard work it involves, but the sheer pleasure of cultivation and beauty.

Last year I spent a Saturday workshop with Edwina McKinnon, a UK quilter and dyer of some note.   The subject was screen printing with thickened dyes, creating and using our own designs.  I chose to work with leaf shapes and wavy grass shapes.  We cut the shapes out of newspaper and stuck these to our silk screens and ‘screened away’ with a strong colour palette.

So, I felt this fabric was just perfect for our third challenge.  The centre panel uses the leaf shapes and the uneven borders uses the grass shapes.  Whilst I am quite pleased with the vibrancy of the cloth, I feel my quilting does not do justice.  The beads on the binding represent the ‘jewels’ of the all the flowers that follow the flush of new leaves and grasses on our beautiful plants here in the UK.