Finishing a grandma's garden vintage quilt
 

Hi there,
My 7 year old daughter need a quilt for her bed and the exact model she want will take me years to finish :D so I talk her into having another quilt in the meantime :-) I want to buy a unfinished quilt top on ebay and then just finish it with my longarm. In addition to being quick, I love the idea of having a lovely vintage quilt in my house.
Now, I found several beautiful grandma's garden and this is a model I find beautiful but will NEVER do (too time consuming for me!). However, one is unfinished, one has a kind of bleeding on some block, one is not the right size.
My question is: is there a way to rescue the flowers blocks? Could I cut them and resew them? Could I add a border somehow? I would
I'm not familiar at all with hexagons, so I would appreciate any advice. Thanks!
Annie

buying just the top seems like a great idea. my thought would be to cut around the flowers you want with a seam allowance if you cannot cut them at the seams. then fold the allowance under and applique them on another background.

I couldn't get my link to work, but if you go to YouTube and search for "quilt in a day grandmothers flower garden" Eleanor shows an easy way to use the unfinished blocks.

I've bought quilt tops at estate sales to finish. (Darn it, I haven't found any Grandma's flower gardens.) You have to be careful with how much time you spend "fixing" the flaws or redesigning them. Most were cut with scissors, so they are not necessarily cut consistently. If you end up cutting it apart or ripping out seams, you may end up putting more time into it than you anticipate.

I'm working on one right now that I thought would go quickly. I needed add just one more row of squares to make it come out with a correct ratio and attach those two pieces. Easy, huh? Well, no not exactly. I had to rip out all cross seams in extra pieces to add them. Since I'd gone that far, I might as well rip a cross row in the center and reverse it, as it had too much red in that area and not enough blue. Except they didn't really fit, so I added a row there. Now I'm trying to square it up for borders and it's not cooperating. I've had to rip out an area and add to the strip as it was too short. I'm going to have to get out a long table today to square it up, as it's still not cooperating.

Waiting in the wings, I have a gorgeous hand stitched Dresden plate top that was was 1/2 done with all the plates completed. Not only was the sashing not a consistent width or length, but the quilter had left a hole where the cornerstones went. So I ripped out all the sashing and will replace it.

I'm just saying it's not as easy as you would think to finish someone else's work. Or else, you have to have more discipline than I have and just take it like it is. I would still do it, but next time, I won't expect it to be easy.

bkay

The one I'm trying to square up and a sample of the multicolored Dresden plates.

[QUOTE=bkay;7832907]I've bought quilt tops at estate sales to finish. (Darn it, I haven't found any Grandma's flower gardens.) You have to be careful with how much time you spend "fixing" the flaws or redesigning them. Most were cut with scissors, so they are not necessarily cut consistently. If you end up cutting it apart or ripping out seams, you may end up putting more time into it than you anticipate.

I totally get your point! But since it would be only for my daughter's use, I would really take it as it is. As I'm not that good at piecing, I have develop quite a large amount of small longarm tricks to make wonky top and such works :-)

You should be able to find a complete GFG top for sale on ebay. Expect to pay around $100 for a full size top or larger. If you don't want to pay that much, you may be able to find something you like for less, but it'll require some watching, patience and time.

I'm in Canada, fabric here is 15$ USD a yard, so 100$ for a finished top is a steal :-)