Fibermania

Filling a Request

48" square, Hand dyed cottons and Kaffe Fassett Striped fabrics

Machine pieced and machine quilted

Melody,
In the last photo of your post of September 16, 2007 ("Settling In'), there is an exquisite-looking quilt hanging over the back of one of the reddish-brown chairs. PLEASE could I have a closer look at it? Or can you direct me to where I can see a photo of it? I'm captivated... and can't get it out of my mind :) Karen in South Africa

Detail of the piecing. Yes. Piecing.

The quilt, no name that I can remember was made for our Artfabrik booth in Houston in 1997. Ten years ago already. Amazing.

We got this bright idea to order the newly available Kaffe Fasset woven stripes at the IQA show about a month before the show date. We ordered the bolts and began to cut them into yards, halfs, and fat quarters to get ready for the show. I thought it would be smart to make a sample of the stripes in combination with our hand dyed cottons, which was what we wanted the customers to buy along with the stripes.

At the show, we discovered that there was a big exhibit of Kaffe Fassett quilts and his books and we were the only booth that had his fabric. The customers flocked to our booth! The lines were long and the ladies were not what I call patient. They thought we ought to have come with two cash registers and charge machines to handle the crowd. It was a feeding frenzy. Then it was all gone. Just gone. A few of the same colored stripes were left, all in fat quarters. Gold and brown. Not inspiring, I guess.

That was the only time we carried anyone else's fabric.

Here's the pattern.

1. Cut a million strips of hand dyed cottons. Maybe 2.5" wide.

2. From the strips:Cut a bunch of squares of both stripes and plain colors and stack one of each. 3. Sew diagonal parallel lines of stitches leaving a big quarter inch space between the lines of stitching and then cut between the lines of stitches. The results are two half square triangles. 4. To each half square triangle add two strips log cabin style to the edge on two sides.

5. Group these small units together into a block and add more strips around the sides. And do whatever looks good with the rest.

6. Stitch in the ditch for the quilting.