Flowering Gum Quilt - Part 1

A little while ago, I started noticing this gorgeous gum blossom quilt appearing on my Instagram feed. I followed some of the tags and found there was a pattern for it by Ruth deVos, an Australian artist. I thought the versions of the quilts I had seen were beautiful and I got the pattern. It was originally released as a block-of-the-month (BOM) but now you get the whole lot at once.

I have been playing around with improv and curved piecing lately. I took some online classes with both Maria Shell and Carolina Oneto recently. I adapted the method in the pattern to use it as a guideline for free cutting the pieces, using the pattern and a light box to directly mark onto the fabric and/or line up pieced sections to join them using Carolina Oneto’s method for organic shapes. I was pretty happy with how it all turned out. I know I would have been frustrated following the pattern directions for piecing.

I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it worked for me.

Here is an in-progress photo. I worked out where to piece each section to join to another. It was all part of the fun.

Next up, putting it all together.