Festival of Quilts (iv)

Imagine seeing the perfect pattern for material you love.

When it's been upladed, this'll be a picture of some nice material.
Currently its on still on the camera.

That happened to me at the Festival of Quilts.

I loved the material first. It had been a candidate for the Mystery Quilt, but I chose peas and cabbages instead. However, a month later, I went back to the shop with a picture of a floral quilt downloaded from the internet (the website is no more) and some rough sketches of a possible design and said "sell me enough material to make something like these". So they did.

I hadn't got round to thinking about the design. Too many other things to do first, like Charmed, and Autumn Leaves, and the Mystery Quilt. And finish knitting the Lichen jumper, and the Limbo jumper and the First Socks. And then there are the embroidery projects as yet unfinished.

But I saw the quilt to make with it on the Magic Patch magazine display. I asked, it is in the issue due out next (number 33, which will be available in early October). I'm planning to make it, mostly using the same material.

The design of the Magic Patch quilt is perfect for the material. When I saw it, my reaction was "oh wow, I must have do that". It wasn't a design that happened to use the material, it was designed for the material. Yes, there appear to be lots of material designs that are similar - like some of the Australiana ones from Aussie Dreams. And you could adapt the main idea for other fabrics, but this quilt was designed for this material.

Following a design so closely is really not like me. A while ago, I read a post on someone's blog about how to be more daring in one's quilting. It had things like "use different colours", and "make it a different size". Elsewhere I read a post by someone who felt really daring the first time she used a "light blue", instead of the "dark blue" the quilt designer specified. In both cases my reaction was closer to "do some people not automatically make changes to designs?" then "wow, how daring".

The material - from the Southwest range by Timeless Treasures - isn't actually an Australiana one. I thought it was, but it isn't. When I was looking for more material - the design has turquoise in it, I have no turqoise material - I came across the Lady Button Fabrics website, and their description of the fabric
told me the figure is actually Kokopelli, a figure in the Hopi legends of the Anasazi Indians.