Patchwork Garden

In 2008 I bought Kaffe Fassett's book Country Garden Quilts. I love his books and work on a number of his quilts at a time. But something in this book stuck in my mind - the Allotment Quilt. This is a quilt made from strips to look like an old style English allotment. The quilts throughout the book are photographed at Great Dixter, Christopher Lloyd's famous English Country Garden. It must have been floating around in there for sometime because the other night I awoke at 2am suddenly struck with a picture of a miniature house in the middle of a patchwork garden made from Kaffe Fassetts fabric. The problem then was to make it happen, as I am definitely a kit builder and not a designer and scratch builder. I had in my mind something very similar to the little farm house that was in Rita's farm kit - so I emailed her and asked how to go about doing it. She was very lovely and kind and sent me the pieces ready cut. So then this weekend I started on my patchwork garden.

It took quite sometime to decide which fabrics were right, this is what I chose and then glued onto a painted baseboard. Then I added a 144th scale hedge. The whole base board is only 4 inches x 4 inches.

I wanted a 'perfect' little white cottage, with a lovely red door - all beautifully symmetrical. I added rows of greenery in between my 'flower beds' of fabric.

I knew it had to have an archway into the garden and again I knew exactly how I wanted it to look! So I used little bits left over from the Sea Shanty kit and just cut some thin strips.

I did slightly wider edges to make sure that it was fairly stable.

Then two strips across the top.

Of course there needed to be red roses growing over the doorway and yellow roses growing up to the roof.

Over the archway is a mix of roses and clematis growing through each other.

Here it is close up.

Now looking around the house from various angles.

Here is a birds-eye view of the garden.

I put a larger window in the side to add some interest. It is blue lace behind the little window frames.

And another look around the garden as a whole.

Peeking through the archway.

Now its time to leave.

I have so enjoyed this project, and it is so unlike me to start and finish something in one go - as anyone reading this blog will know I tend to flit from one thing to another as whimsy takes me. I am really pleased with how it has turned out - just as I dreamed it would - such a lovely splash of colour!