Tuesday, May 1, 2012

It's May, It's May!!!!

When I was a young girl, Camelot the film came out and I was forever in love with:
Musicals, King Arthur, knights in general, Camelot in specific and this song!


Yeah, I know... How campy can it get? right?
"It's time!! To do!! A wretched thing or two!"  oh dear

Oh I love May!!! Has it not been an exquisite Spring? I am in the best of moods and just got home from filling in at the shop on a Tuesday, not my usual day and I had a great day.

First of all, I got to play with fabric and pulled together new kits with Mona, always a fun day when we build kits. Here is why: We get a lot of patterns in the inventory stock but obviously there is simply no way anyone of us could make every quilt top that we could want to. The next best thing is to come up with the fabric selection we WOULD use if we had the time to make them ourselves. And we really think it through to pull the right bolt. Really, it is as though we were going to make it ourselves. So when the right fabric and pattern get paired together, we kit it with pride and we include binding because like a mat and frame around a painting, the binding has to work with the quilt and often it is the last thing one thinks of when auditioning fabrics.

"Oh, I'll get that when I choose the backing." Now that is an option, obviously, and the binding should reflect both front and back but mostly the front, I think.

So, we have had a collection on hand for a few months that hasn't gotten much attention and I wondered why that is. It is so soft and and, well the word 'mild' comes to mind but like many bolts that end up surprising me, very pretty when you open it up and see more than a 1" slice on the bolt's edge.  So this is what we kitted today: Boxtrot!


The kit makes exactly the quilt size you see on the pattern cover and we chose this eggplant on the upper right as the sashing the fabric. All the other fabric is from the Jessica Swift line, "Preeti".

Well, what do you know waltzed in the door just before closing hour this afternoon but Mary Green and this cool version of the very pattern, Boxtrot? Coincidence or Serendipity?



Then, Pearl pulled out these new fabrics from George Mendoza to kit the new "Wave" pattern from Connie Eubanks. The yellow fabric in the upper right is the fabric used in the light blue "bars" you see in the pattern cover shot. the fabric in the upper left is the border fabric.






Ok, now last week we finished our 2 day class on the Radiant Star and when (or if) I get shots form the students' quilts, I'll post them too but here is the second of the 2 I am working on at the moment.

The main fabric comes from the Phillip Jacobs line and Kaffe Fassett from Westminister fabrics and batiks. Yes, I mixed the two and why not?

Now I am working on the outer border and I think you can see where I am wandering. I'll shoot more pix when it is finished.  Radiant Star, It should be on the "Bucket List!"

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