"Enchanted" - an adventure in English Paper Piecing

It's almost finished. Only layering, basting, quilting and binding needed.
WHAT?

Okay, let's start at the beginning.
This ist the fist challenge I am participating in, the challenge "My Garden" of the German Quilt Guild which was released in October 2016.

These are the conditions of the challenge:
- the quilt has to finish at a length of 70 cm and a width of 35 cm (a small quilt, quickly done 😏)
- each participant has been sponsored with a piece of fabric which has to be visible in the quilt (done 😊)
- the quilt has to be sent in to the Quilt Guild til the 10th of March 2017 (manageable 😏)

I felt a bit wary about the challenge because the fabric was a great mystery. What if ... it would be ugly? What if ....it wouldn't be my taste? What if ...?
Anyway, I liked the subject of the challenge, I was curious, and decided to give it a try.

And look, what I found in my kit when I pulled it out of the mailbox. A beautiful pink fabric with red flowers and a spool of lovely green thread! I was thrilled and immediately went through my stash on the search for fitting fabrics. It was October when I got my kit and I thought about spring when the quilt should be finished, so I wanted to use bright colors.
This are the fabrics of my choice: a small collection of greys, several greens, a deep purple, a beautiful red which almost exactly fits the color of the flowers, and a sunny orange.

Here you can see a closeup of the "main fabric" and the label of the set of templates I chose for the small quilt. Because I like English Paper Piecing I wanted to use this technique on the Garden quilt. I thought about something that would fit the subject, first came up with a "Grandmother's Flower Garden", and then remembered the set of templates my sweet wife had bought in Karlsruhe about two years ago. It is called "Gloria's Flower". Now, isn't it just perfect?
Got the fabric, got the pattern; game, set and match!

The next step: how shall I use the colors in the quilt? What am I going to do with the pattern? The usual layout for Gloria's Flower seems to be the pattern shown on the label. But I have a knack to try the unusual. A quilt done by Sue Daley inspired me to turn the pattern 45° and put the elongated hexagons in a vertical and horizontal direction.

When I looked at the first steps of my layout the hexies reminded me of a garden trellis whith flowers in between. I liked the idea and decided that the hexies would be a trellis of wrought iron, so they were going to be made in several shades of grey (not fifty, haha).

Then I continued drawing and suddenly a secondary pattern popped up which kept staying in my mind. What if I tried to design my garden as if I looked through the lense of a camera at a garden with the focus on the iron bars of the trellis and the colored and green bushes and flowers being blurred circles in the background?
I was hooked immediately by this idea and started coloring my chart. The chart looked really intriguing to me ,so I decided: that's going to be my design.

This is the final design chart where I counted all pieces I needed to make the quilt in the correct size.

Then I happily started basting and piecing my garden quilt. Because the pieces are not too tiny it was growing rather quick. And when it had got a really good size I suddenly realized that perhaps I should take a few pictures of the process...

I really love how the secondary pattern pops out in the quilt.

Now I'm racking my head about how to quilt my baby. I am planning to get it finished this weekend. And I promise I'll take a picture of good quality of the finished quilt 😏.