Top: Forever Fairy Tales

I finished a quilt top! I’ve posted some small in-progress shots of it here, and at my Instagram, but I wanted to properly share it here.

I sometimes get hand-me-down quilt magazines from my mother-in-law. Her apartment complex is full of seniors, some of whom share my love of quilting, and who are happy to mass their magazines on after they’ve been read.

I just so happened to have been paging through one of these hand-me-down magazines shortly after I received my half-yard bundle of Fibs and Fables by Anna Maria Horner. I already knew that I wanted to make the quilt top out of just that line of fabrics, and I was looking for inspiration. I found it in the December 2006 Issue of American Patchwork & Quilting (Issue 82). Their pattern was called Diamond in the Rough.

I immediately knew that it was the pattern I wanted to work with, despite nearly all the pieces being sixty degree diamonds. A lot of starch, and a lot of pressing, and I was set to cut everything!

Being the ADD crafter that I am, I got so far, and then stopped. So, the top sat for a bit. First, because I needed a little more fabric to come in. Then because I was making sampler blocks. Finally, I determined that I was going to finish the top, and devoted nearly all my sewing time to it.

I got this far and thought… maybe I’ll just stop here. It’s done right?

WRONG!

I slept on the matter, and decided that it absolutely needed another border.

You’ll notice that there are two fabrics used in the border… I wanted it to be the same fabric throughout, but I really didn’t want to buy more fabric from this line, so I made do with what I had.

Now, I’ve just got to figure out a backing. Binding fabric is on hand – I have enough of the black print that forms the inner border to bind the beast. And, I’ve figured out the name for this top – Forever Fairy Tales.

It’s a nod to AMH’s inspiration for this fabric, and the diamonds that make up this quilt. Because diamonds are forever, right?

Anyway, I’m extremely pleased with how it turned out, barring a couple of prints landing too closely together as I was piecing, but I’m not ripping things apart to fix that.