Pearl's Garden Quilt

Pearl Pereira of P3 Designs lives in Southern California, has been sewing since she was 6 years old, and creates some of the loveliest applique patterns we've ever seen.  Since August is the month that many of us in the Northern Hemisphere are  harvesting home-grown fruits and vegetables or shopping for them at local farmers' markets, we're featuring the charming "Pearl's Garden Quilt."

"Pearl's Garden Quilt", size 54 x 60 , is comprised of twelve 9" x 12" appliqued vegetable blocks, accompanied by embroidered herbs and inked lettering. In addition, this quilt features four smaller  6 x 9 blocks of very cute appliqued insects, embroidered herbs, and inked lettering. The four smaller blocks can be seen in close-up at the gallery page of P3 designs.

The "Pearl's Garden" pattern contains easy to follow instructions for the embroidery and inking of the vegetable and herb names, plus full size patterns for hand applique of the very realistic looking vegetables.

The sophisticated renderings of the vegetables are juxtaposed against a patchwork background of soft ecru,  natural linen beige, vanilla, and pale taupe fabrics, which give a homey, comforting look to this quilt. Here's a great opportunity to use neutral hue remnants of  quilt backing or fat quarters from former quilt projects. Depending upon your decor, you could also select background fabrics of pale, icy green or soft pale silvery gray. 

We especially love this block above, because as owners of a carefully-tended home grown tomato plant, we think Pearl has done a perfect job of drawing these lifelike leaves and blossoms. Pearl has chosen just the right shade of sage and olive green batik fabric for this plant. However, you could also make these blocks in tiny calico prints or monochromatic tone-on-tone fabrics, depending upon the selection from your stash.

Note : Pearl Pereira and her colleague Nancy Avidon teach at many well-known workshops and seminars throughout the year, including hosting a fabulous quilt cruise to Hawaii in the spring of 2013. For more information and more gorgeous patterns, please see Pearl's home page of P3 Designs .

Image credits: Images shown are with the generous permission of the artist.