I love traditional quilts but wanted to move far beyond the traditional side-by-side block layout. Working with EQ's Custom Layout allows me to experiment with asymmetric designs such as the one in this quilt, allowing for a lot of movement in the final design. For a long time I had wanted to experiment with dimensional techniques and I was finally able to apply them here. The basic layout was decided quite quickly, and as the design grew I made changes to some of the sections, either because I found the blocks were simply too complicated to be handpieced in such small size or because I came up with another design for that section that seemed to work better. Initially I had decided on a very elaborate scalloped border, but no matter how much I worked on it, it just didn't seem to fit. I started playing around with EQ's different border options and finally came up with this much more simple design and immediately knew that simplicity was what was called for, in order to let the "garden" stand out on its own.
Although the quilt is laid out basically in two layers, with motifs on the second layer to appreciate the overall effect, I redrew many of the blocks in Easy Draw to ensure the accuracy of my templates. Trying to decide on the quilting was difficult, and I was not able to find an overall design that seemed to fit. David's gardening style was somewhat unusual in that he wasn't adverse to and, in fact, loved weeds mixed among his flowers. Much in the same way as we quilters do not believe there is such a thing as "ugly flowers," he, too, did not believe there is such a thing as "bad plants." For him, each plant fulfills a purpose and even weeds are there to provide some kind of service. So I decided to let my quilting needle meander throughout the quilt in whatever direction it chose, symbolizing the odd way in which weeds pop up in a garden here and there.
