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.

Fibs & Fables Fabric

Not all that long ago, I won a gift certificate to fatquartershop.com. I used it towards a half yard bundle of Fibs and Fable by Anna Maria Horner.

Being that I’m an impatient type of person, I wasn’t content to let it sit in my stash for very long, so on the last day of 2015, I started starching, pressing, and cutting.

A couple of evenings ago, I was able to start piecing, and I am so very, very glad that I have converted to starching my fabrics:

When choosing which fabrics to cut at what size, I decided I wanted to preserve the integrity of the large scale prints in the collection. As I piece, I’m attempting to keep them spaced across the quilt, and to disperse the color groups.

So far, so good, even if piecing is slowed by my running between the machine and the design wall.