Rita's Garden

Several months ago I decided I wanted to make a quilt throw for my sister-in-law, Rita Benson. She's been a Great SiL for almost 40 years now so i thought it was high time I did something special. In searching through my pre-cuts, I found a layer cake of large florals (Flora Rosa by Benartex) and chose those as my primary fabrics. Took me a while but I finally found just the right shade of peachy-pink solid and white-on-white swirly fabrics for sashing/background. Hmmmm, now for the quilt pattern. And you all KNOW how long choosing a pattern can take!! I knew I didn't wanna cut the layer cake up into smaller pieces bc I wanted the beautiful florals to be the centerpieces of the quilt. Then I got the latest BLOCK Magazine in the mail!! As soon as I saw Sunny Skies, I knew that was exactly what I'd been looking for! Of course, I had to modify it so that my layer cake replaced the 16-patch but hey, as Jenny would say, anything to make it easier!! I'm still working on getting the back pieced & ready to be quilted but as soon as it's done, I'll update this so y'all can see the finished product! Thanks for checking me out! UPDATE: Finished the back late last night and just may now like the back more than the front! On the way to completion, an interesting thing happened...but I'll start at the beginning. I never plan my backings ahead of time and this was no exception. I was lucky enough to find 2 yards of floral fabric in my stash and lo and behold, it was from the same line as my quilt top so it was already in the quilt! That was the good news. Clearly, 2 yds wasn't enough...BUT, I also had a little over 2 yards of my favorite, go-to black & white "Widescreen" fabric. I had plenty of 10x10 peach squares so I decided to cut the floral into 10x14 rectangles. Anyway, when I started laying everything out on my design wall, quite a lovely pattern emerged. Hope YOU like it, too! Taking it all to the quilter's tomorrow! ADDENDUM: Finally finished the back & got it back from the quilter last week. I LOVE IT!!!