WIP Grandmother's Mexican Day of the Dead Garden

Back in 2011, I signed up for Material Obsession's Starting Block year long program.

It is a great program with interesting and varied blocks and I loved getting my parcel in the mail each month.  But work demands meant I started (and did not finish) only one of them in 2011.  And I only managed to complete two in 2013 (perhaps I'll share these another time).

I started the Grandmothers Garden block in 2012.  It is a hand piecing project with 3/4 inch hexagons.  The kit came with a great combination of 1930s fabrics.

This is what it is supposed to look like....

However, as is so often the case, I got a little carried away....as I was working on the flowers the fabrics kept reminding me of Mexican Day of the Dead skull decorations....so I whipped out some white cotton, found an image of a skull and .....

Look what appeared in the middle of my garden!  The eyes are purchased iron on (left over from dresses I made for my daughters) but the rest is all my own work!

Inserting the skull meant I needed rather more flowers to ensure it was surrounded.  Back to my stash and another three whole and four half flowers have been included.

It's not finished yet.  I need to finish surrounding the garden with black hexagons, then add borders.  I plan to use the black lattice provided in the kit for two of the borders and I'm hoping to use this...

for the remaining two borders.  These lovely scraps were begged from a great friend who has recently discovered her sewing mojo and made the coolest dress for her teenager from this fabric.  Lucky girl!

I get strong reactions from the few friends and family I've shown this work in progress to. Most are 'What! Why?'...my mother was plain horrified ...lost for words. But I love it! What do you think?

I suspect its going to be awhile longer in the making, at my current pace it should be finished sometime in 2015!