A Winter Tradition

For the last three years every winter I've made a traditional quilt. I pull out my Kaffe Fassett books and browse through until I find something that seems suitably stunning color-wise and I get started. If necessary I make templates, but most often I can figure out a way to use a rotary cutter to cut the pieces I need. I go through my huge stash of Kaffe fabrics and then I get started. Sometimes I'll order a kit if I'm feeling particularly attached to the outcome as far as pattern and color. I live in an area where I have to drive to get to quilt shops. My favorite local shop went out of business just last year, and with the economy it's getting harder and harder to find interesting fabrics locally, so sometimes I have to resort to online shopping. That's what I did for this quilt, that I made last winter (08-09). I named it Persian Star.


I'd never done a diamond quilt on the machine. I have a huge box full of English paperpieced blocks in 'sweet' pastels that I'd done over the years carrying them in my 'travel kit' so I have something to do when I'm stranded waiting but I haven't done anything with them yet. So I hopefully dove in and completed the center of this one in a decent amount of time. But then the border took forever. Making all those identical little squares then sewing them into strips. After I finished the Sunshine Mandala baby quilt, I pulled this back out and started to put the borders on it. It would feel good to get it finished, at least the piecing part. Well, the borders don't fit. The instructions warned that the border was a bit 'fiddly' but I didn't expect it to be this far off. So I folded it back up and decided it could wait a bit longer until I figure out a plan for the border. In the meantime I've gone back to quilting the behemoth I made the winter before (07-08)--a huge pink floral squares thing. I'm only ditching it, but it's taking forever also. So maybe that's part of the reason why I'm feeling attracted to small pieces, hand made that I can sit by the fire with?