I am in the process of making a quilt for my sister-in-law who has graciously kept my daughters fashionable in knitted hats, blankets, and legwarmers for ballet over the past five years. Every time we go somewhere sporting one of her creations we get so many compliments, and when I saw some fat quarters celebrating her pasttime, I thought it was a sign that I needed to repay her generosity. This is the first time I've ever used a true "novelty" fabric to make something. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, but I like Crazy Mom Quilts Flea Market Fancy quilt for inspiration. (Funny story...she made this quilt back in '08, about two years before I started reading blogs or really knowing much about quilting. I swear I thought the reason she called the quilt "Flea Market Fancy" was because she had bought all the fabric at flea markets--which was quite impressive to me. This was long before I realized there was something called a local quilt shop and that not all fabric came from Joanns!).
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| Veronica helped lay everything out. I have changed the layout about 20 times since I took this picture! |
Anyway, all the blocks featuring knitting had to be fussy cut out, so I spent my mornings before the kids got up this past week cutting out all the pieces. Then #1 #3 baby took a four hour nap today and I was able to piece everything together.
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| Mickey also offered his assistance. He has an eye for style! |
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| Here's a close-up of the novelty fabric. Very cute! Although, my husband thinks it's canibalistic in a sense. |
Dilemma: I used a cream Aunt Grace with red dots as some of the frames around the blocks. Can I use white sashing and still have the block "pop" out to be noticeable? There is also a block with gray and white stripe around it. In Amanda Jean's quilt, all the frames really contrast with the white. I am thinking I need to get out my seam ripper and replace those frames. Any ideas to fix this problem without redoing those blocks? I am open to any design really. I was thinking of instead of adding sashing all the way around each block to instead join the five blocks, then put white sashing above and below only, and then add a white border around the entire thing. Or, if I used white sashing, quilting the heck out of it and then just lightly quilting each of the blocks with just outlining.
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| This is the light gray Lecien stripe. I'm not sure if it will show up enough if I use white sashing. |
Any advice???
***I think I am going to frame each lighter block in solid black, and each darker frame in white, alternating black, white, black, white in each row. On my final layout, it looks like they alternate anyway. What do you think?***
