Work in Progress: Pieced Back, Sandwiches and a Cat!

As you may know - or if you didn't, you're about to.... - Amy Butler's Gypsy Caravan is my all time favorite fabric collection to date. It's the colors, the Art Nouveau, the eclectic array of prints, the florals, the geometrics... yeah, it's a love affair. A couple years after Gypsy Caravan released - I believe around the same time as either Ginger Bliss or Charm was launching - there was a flannel release called Cozy Flannel. It just happened to be reprints of Gypsy Caravan in flannel. And so it goes that when I finally pieced my Gypsy Caravan quilt top, the back most definitely had to be pieced in Cozy Flannel. I sashed the top in Kona Snow I wanted the back sashed in Kaufman quilter's flannel also in Snow. It was sort of a pain in the behind. The Cozy Flannel had a nice woven consistency to it and not much stretch. The Kaufman quilter's flannel stretched.. and made piecing it with the Cozy not so fun at all. I washed all of the flannel, but now I think if I had washed the sashing twice... in HOT... and dried it, on HOT, it might have shrunk up enough to get all of its stretch out. It all worked out and I have a piece of information that is good to know for next time, right?

Piecing a back:

 

Making a quilt sandwich. With help. I kicked her out about a dozen times. What's that? Oh, that's right, those are ruffles you see. I'm doing each one of my quilts in a different process with the ruffles so that I can tell you all the ins and outs of each different way. I have much more experimenting to do first!

 

And... free motion quilting. Again. With help. *sigh*

 

Smooches!

And so, she sews.

I couldn't stand it. I was working away on organizing my stash and figuring out what I was missing and begging my friends to fill in the gaps and I just Had. To. Cut. In. To. It.

And so, the beginnings of my Denyse Schmidt Flea Market Fancy quilt. This quilt from Kristine Hanson's Things To Make Instead of Dinner blog is my complete and total inspiration. I was torn between that one and Megan from the Lucy and Norman blog's Wonky Log Cabin and finally decided on the big, bold pieces of fabric. Thank you both for making such beautiful quilts for me to be inspired by!!!

 

I'm using a block pattern that would cut out of a layer cake stack beautifully. The middle square of the log cabin is 5" and the strips surrounding are 3.5" wide. I wanted big, wide pieces of each print to really show the prints and the colors. This is my third quilt. Ever. (That one in high school still does not count.) Number two is in final binding. I'll show you that later this week I do believe.

 

You also might notice my new design wall! I was inspired by Heather to do this a couple of months ago, but I wanted it RIGHT NOW so instead of building anything, I just moved everything out of the way and stapled my batting right up onto that wall. Whalah! I do hope to get the board and make the portables soon though as I've already put up and taken down multiple designs for fronts and backs!

 

When I get this done I need to give a shout out to everyone that helped me gather and swap and beg and barter for the prints. MUCH LOVE to my fabric peeps. There is some serious Fabric-Karma-Mojo floating around out there right now.

I've already started cutting the ruffles. Yeah, that's right, this one is going to have ruffles too. I think they ALL will :)