The baby quilt progresses

I promised on our return from the Yorkshire trip that I'd show you some of my ill-gotten gains.........

This Laurel Burch 'Mythical Horses' really caught my eye in the shop at Embsay Mills - the background burgundy fairly closely matches the celtic knotwork on the cushions I made for my sister's birthday last November and as she has a horse of her own I thought this fabric would really appeal to her. Mind you at £2.65 per fat quarter (that's around US$5.25 making it US$21 per metre) you can probably understand why I only picked up a couple of fat quarters to use it as accent material probably in the centre of some sawtooth stars.

However all the Rowan solids which are woven with different coloured warp and weft threads to give them a 'shot silk' appearance were on sale at a mere £4 per metre and lots of the colours matched the colours in the horses so I picked up a cart load of these in varying lengths to use for the star points and the sashings.

I shall make a decent sized lap quilt to go over the back of her sofa for cool winter evenings when she likes to sit and cross stitch. This will be her birthday present in November so I don't have to get started on it immediately.

The Rowan stripes were also on sale at £5 a metre and as I'm a sucker for stripes of any kind these just had to jump into my shopping basket. The two narrower striped ones in the background make me think of 1920's men's striped blazers.

And last but not least these other Rowans variegate through several colours and remind me of some of the African fabrics you see - so they had to come home too! I think they'll make lovely bindings or bias strip for celtic knotwork.

The lady at the cutting table commented that they'd sold virtually none of any of this Rowan fabric until it had been put in the sale - mind you I believe it retails out at around £12 per metre so it's not surprising really even if people will pay that for the usual printed cottons.

On a different note I've stitched all nine sawtooth stars for the baby quilt for Erica. Here's one with some of the sashing already attached. Much like Spencer's Stars I shall use cream sashings like the star background but pink cornerstones to match the star points because there wasn't that much fabric in the skirt. However this quilt won't be anything like as heavily quilted as my nephew's was. So there's a bit of assembly still to do and lots of applique - a flower in the centre of each star and probably some more in the plain cream outer border. Who knows a few little pale green butterflies might just fly in to play too.