Thursday, December 27, 2012

Another girl's fairy quilt

This was the second flower fairy quilt completed this year, made for our youngest granddaughter, now nearly two years old.  Her dad was the inspiration for these quilts, when he called to say their expected baby would be a girl, he added "she's going to need a fairy quilt."   I had just seen some of Michael Miller's gorgeous flower fairy panels and fairy frost fabrics and was only too happy to oblige!
This one, completed in March, provided a perfect opportunity to practice the first three months' tutorials from SewCalGal's FMQ Challenge, with Frances Moore's leaf motif, Ann Fahl's meandering loops and flowers, and multitudes of feathers both within the borders and the panel, courtesy of Diane Gaudynski's excellent tutorial.   A few detail photos:
 



I especially liked this sparkly, fun polka dot fabric used in the top and bottom panels, providing a bit of glittery accent, since the fairy frost fabric was only used sparsely in this quilt.  The soft peachy-pink border fabric was found at a local yard sale, as were the large central panel and the smaller side panels - lucky finds!

This was much fun to make and to quilt, especially the feather practice!  Quilting for both fairy quilts was accomplished on my 1942 Singer 15-91 machine, using Aurifil 50 wt in both top and bobbin, with the exception of the small fairy panels shown above, for which I experimented with YLI silk 100 wt. thread.

I arose this morning in time to see a beautiful pale orange full moon setting in the western sky.  It appears we're about to have several days' reprieve from the seemingly endless rain and fog this month.  In a day or two the garden catalogs will begin arriving in the mail, and we can begin seeing the daylight hours increasing once again!   The robins will be back in a week or two to eat all the pyracantha berries next to the front deck.  Can spring be far behind?

3 comments:

Dora, the Quilter said...

I love your fairy quilt. (I so wanted to make one but couldn't decide exactly how to do it and ended up not buying any of the fabric--so I especially love looking at yours!)

Margie Tobin said...

Hi
I found your beautiful quilt,when searching for fairy things.
My girlfriend and I are novice's at this quilting caper,(we have made a couple)when looking at your quilt we would be able to accomplish it.
We would very much appreciate it,if you would be able to tell us the width of fabric between each fairy square and the main panel and also the width of the fabric that you used on the outer edge.
Thankyou are sharing and inspiring us.
Kind regards
Margie T

Quilting Babcia said...

Margaret, I hope you check back on this post since you are a "no-reply blogger" I couldn't respond via a private message. The narrower pink strips between the fairy blocks finished at 3" wide as I recall, and the outer border was 6 inches.