Carolina Lily blocks - on trial

Fabric decision made! Here is the first block of my Carolina Lily quilt:

The print is the favourite

How did I come to this decision? After deliberating quite long enough about fabric choice I made two trial blocks in different yellows. Thanks so much for the comments and ideas received - this was a great solution for me! The yellow print stood out more than the yellow solid in varied lighting. This was a plus as the green is such a strong colour - don't want the yellow flowers to disappear. I also realise that I prefer the lemony yellow of the print to the darker gold of the solid.

The photo of the blocks together (below) is not a good photo - sorry. I can't seem to get a true colour and the print looks positively dirty. The photo above is much truer.

The two trial blocks

Block construction also needed deliberation ;)

The pattern for each lily block (11 3/4 ") requires 28 individual fabric shapes to be pieced together (including background pieces), and then the stems/leaves to be appliqued on top. I don't enjoy this sort of piecing (am not at all good at it!) so had already decided I would just have a background square and applique the lot onto it.

To help with applique placement I made a block frame - with opening the size of finished block. Then I made a sketch of the block on graph paper - the placement sketch for the applique pieces. By laying the background fabric square over this, on top of a lightbox, I could make sure the pieces would be in the same place on each block (hopefully?!).

Next:  to make the flowers with English Paper piecing method:

For the stems I made bias tape:

Great tool for bias making

It is usually easy enough to applique this tape along curves but in this case the tape is half an inch thick - too thick to be very flexible -  and did not cooperate with the sharper corners (see below). I ended up with some ugly bunching on the inner curves ... not happy! 

Curved bias stems did not sew down well - not using this method

So - I reverted to my favourite method of back-basted applique for the curved stems, and saved the bias tape only for the centre straight stem. That worked well - happy now!

I'll post some photos of this method in progress next time. Am not having luck loading more photos today...sigh.

If you would like to see some precise piecing of a lovely Carolina Lily quilt have a look at

 Thelma's red Carolina lilies - all machine pieced and even machine appliqued - magic! She has included great photo instructions. 

Photo from Thelma's blog with permission - beautiful!