Monthly Archives: January 2020
I Like You
I do like you, and I also really like this Far Far Away II fabric by Heather Ross.
For those of you who have been following Heather for a long time, you probably recognize the name of this collection. Heather originally released Far Far Away in quilting cotton back in 2014. Last fall, she released Far Far Away II with new fabrics and new colors.
I’m not sure I can pick a favorite, but the moons are pretty high on the list. So are the paper hats. And the honey jars. And the flowers. And, and, and…see the problem trying to choose?
There are very few artists who do juvenile fabrics well, and Heather is on that short list. So often “kid fabrics” are cheesy or are your typical teddy bears or trains or something else that’s been done a million times. Heather keeps it new and fresh every time and her fabrics work for kids and adults alike.
As for this pattern, I wanted to do something diamond-like with a twist, and this is what I came up with.
I also mixed in some solids to help break it up.
This quilt comes together pretty quickly because it has larger pieces, which was intentional. Since some of the fabrics have large-scale prints, I wanted to be able to show them off as much as possible.
I did put quite a bit of time and thought into the fabric placement. My main goal was to evenly distribute the fabric by color and then try to avoid having flowers next to one another, moons next to one another, etc. I think it works.
That’s it for now. I’m not quite ready to quilt this one. I’m thinking about using a vintage sheet for the quilt back, but that’s still TBD. I’ll keep you posted.
Washington Depot
Happy 2020 and cheers to a new decade of quilting! First up in the new year is my Washington Depot quilt (made with Denyse Schmidt’s Washington Depot fabric).
This quilt is made up of 30 blocks, but getting to all 30 was questionable at times. I squeezed every last inch out of the fabric and I had to throw in a few solids to make it happen. I started with fat quarters of the Washington Depot fabric, but I needed some of the fat quarters for another project so there wasn’t quite enough fabric to make all the blocks.
I pulled some white fabric from my stash and added a few other solids to make it to the finish line.
Now that it’s done and I can see the quilt in its entirety, I think it worked out well to use the solid white fabric and make every other block white. It helps to separate the blocks and make each of them stand out on their own.
There’s also a solid pink, a greeny/yellow and a dark green. They don’t match perfectly with the colors in the Washington Depot fabric, but close enough to pull it all together and add another layer of color.
Normally I would stash this finished quilt top away and think about finding fabric backing for it later, like wayyyy later, but surprisingly I found the perfect back while I was traveling over the holidays, so I might actually quilt this one sooner rather than later. I’m very excited about the fabric back and can’t wait to share it with you.
By the way, this quilt block was inspired by a vintage quilt. I don’t know the name of the block or if it even has a name, but if anyone does know please share.
That’s a wrap on my first blog post and quilt share for 2020. Here’s to many more!
