fun fabrics

Here's a couple of close-ups of some quilting that I just finished.  Some of you fabric junkies out there can probably name this fabric easily, it is from a group called "Flea Market Fancy" designed by Denyse Schmidt.  It was originally released several years ago and was one of the most successful groups of fabric, with people searching for bits and pieces of it ever since.  Fabric companies, in general, don't re-print fabric lines unless they are some of the staples.  So it isn't possible for stores to re-order more bolts, once the printing is sold out.  Therefore, when you see something you want in the fabric store, don't plan to wait until later to buy it!  Anyway,  Free Spirit Fabrics has released this reprint of Flea Market Fancy, and Debbie used it to make a quilt for an upcoming class at Bear Patch.  I am showing you just some little sections to demonstrate a couple of things.

First, let the fabric be your guide in the quilting design.  I have done this before in a couple of projects that have good polkadots at regular intervals.  I just stitch a wavy line around the dots and end up with something fun.

Second, remember that a lot of detail in the quilting shows up differently depending on the background fabrics.  In this quilt, there were sets of strips set around those nice polkadot block centers.  Debbie's request on this quilting was to have something curvy to play off all the straight lines of the strips.  So because this fabric is kind of playful and funky, in my opinion, that's where my mind went with my choice of quilting design.  I made swoopy lines on the strips with portions filled in with a style of quilting know as "pebbles".

This was fun to do, and fit with the style of the fabrics, but as you can see in the photo above, the pebbles are kind of lost on some of the fabrics.  I still like the design, but might do it differently if I was starting over!  

This morning I came across a quote that struck me as very helpful.  I wish I had had it handy when my kids were young and learning lessons about being honest and doing the right thing even when no one is watching.  

“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there will be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Think of what a wonderful world this would be if every person lived by this.