July, 2018 - lovinglylissa

I woke up on a Monday morning a few weeks ago to an email that made my week! Lizzie Clark asked me if I would be part of a blog hop introducing her new fabric line. How absolutely exciting for me to be asked that! This was the first time a designer reached out to me and asked me to make something for their line!

I looked at the fabrics and knew there was no way I could say no. The night before I had been going through my library of Kansas City Star blocks and this fabric seemed perfect to use in an updated version of one of those blocks. (I love vintage made modern, don’t you?)

I did check with Lizzie to make sure that a quilt top would be okay, I knew with the kids home and hubby away, that quilting would probably not happen. She was fine with that, so I signed up and then excitedly got out my design notebook and started drawing away.

I chose the Propeller block from the Kansas City Star because I felt it would be a great way to show off all 14 of the fabrics from this line.

Kansas City Star patterns are usually made by hand, but that was not going to work for me. I needed to devise a new way to create this block. I grabbed my Classic Curves ruler from Color Girl Quilts that I’ve been dying to try out and went to work. To cut down on possible cutting errors I taped over the slots I did not need on the Classic Curves Ruler. I loved using the ruler, it made fitting the curves together go very smoothly.

I enjoyed pairing the fabrics with each other. Honestly, there wasn’t really a wrong decision to be made, these beauties are so complimentary. I loved the richness of all the tones together .

Here it is in all its glory. Wowzers!!!

What? You only count 13 prints? Well, that’s because number 14 is going to be my binding! It will be cut on the bias so the buds will appear on the diagonal of the binding. Cute, right?

I already have my thread for quilting and will be searching out an appropriate backing this week.

I don’t have a name for this yet. I originally was thinking “Flights of Fancy” since the block is called Propeller. But every time I look at this quilt I start singing “Proud Mary” by Tina Turner, so maybe it should be called “Rolling on the River.” It does seem more water wheel to me than propeller in the end. What do you all think? (you’re all singing Proud Mary now, aren’t you? Big wheel keep on burning!)

I don’t have a pattern created yet since I was making a lot of this up as I went along (who says I don’t improv quilt?) but I will work on it. I will be entering it into some AQS shows that are coming up. I’ll let you know if it gets in.

Here are some more gorgeous shots. It really pays to have an in-house photographer.