Gerber Daisy Wall Hanging - Part 1

My new project that I'm currently working on is a Gerber daisy wall hanging. The actual design for this wall hanging is my own and I'm making it for my friend Karen who loves Gerber daisies. The Gerber daisies will be fused applique and what I did to come up with my design for the daisies was to first study many photographs of Gerber daisies. I had some of my own that I have taken over the years plus I did several Google searches to find some good specimens for my research.  I decided that my Gerber was going to be multi-layered since the petals of this flower typically have several rows as do the smaller central petals near the centre of the flower.

I did a test run to see how it would look and was pleased with my results. Here is my sample piece which I turned into a mini wall hanging that I now have up in my sewing room. The flower is about 7" across which was a nice size to work with. If it was much smaller then I think the cutting and sewing would become tedious.

For the actual wall hanging I'm planning on having 5 Gerber daisies in various shades of pink from light to dark on a pieced green background. The background is what I have been working on this week since I also wanted to try something different there as well. I have been interested in the diamond blocks that are used in Jan Krentz's book "Diamond Quilts and Beyond". 
http://www.jankrentz.com/store-details.php?ID=9

After going through my stash of green fabrics and realizing that I was a bit shy on the dark greens, I picked some up at a couple of quilt shops while I was visiting Buffalo and Rochester a couple of weeks ago. I got my various green diamonds cut and spent the last few days working on the design wall arranging the background layer. This is what it looks like.

I'm quite pleased with the results since I have managed to get that colour washed effect I was after.  So now comes the fun part of sewing all those rows of diamonds together, yes we are talking biased seams. Now I did use spray starch when I was ironing my fat quarters to help with the stability issue. I tried first to cut one strip as per the instructions in Jan's book and found that without the starch there was too much stretch and I knew I would have problems when it came to sewing all those diamonds. Hopefully with the starch I will have saved myself some headaches. I will let you know next week.