Friday, April 4, 2014

In Service To Her Majesty...The Queen

Not Long Ago, in a Land Far, Far Away, 
HRH Sue, Sovereign of the Queendom of Quilt Times, set out on a journey.  Her plan was to design, write and execute her vision and plan, in order to bring forth a more beautiful kingdom.  She called upon her Royal Subjects to aide her in establishing and perfecting her plans to blanket her kingdom in beautifully laid paths, walls and gardens...
even the Village Idiot (insert picture of myself here) was allowed to take part...

Okay!  I'm thinking waaaay too hard here...
Sue made a quilt, and named it Red Sprinkles.

Someone showed interest in making it too and she was challenged to create a pattern.  She posted that she needed some pattern testers and some of her loyal friends jumped at the opportunity to help! 
 
I had a vision...(that I unmercifully taunted her with)
But I was also struggling with the fear of cutting into an irreplaceable, treasured print without first being certain that all the cutting instructions were correct, so I went in a different direction using fabric in my stash that was cute, but not as "highly esteemed" as the irreplaceable. 
(Oh, I am sooo, ready for a viewing of Mr. Darcy...Whoops!  ADD moment...)
So I set off on my adventure with my tote full of cute little Daisies and Bees and my other larger tote full of cute neutral prints and
Honey Bee Sprinkles was born.  This quilt speaks to me of becoming that quilt that lives on the recliner...the one that kids and grandkids come home and curl up in. 


 Now, somewhat foolishly, (living up to my role as Village Idiot) I just went full steam ahead with cutting fabric as instructed, while another tester was wisely doing the math.  The result was that I had cut my corner triangles about 5 seconds prior to receiving an email telling me that the measurement was too small.  I didn't have enough of my red border print to recut the corners...I knew where more of it was to be had, but I wasn't up for all it would entail to drive across town, pilfer through my friends stash and hope she wouldn't notice that I had cut two good sized squares out of her yardage. 
But then!  Eureka!  I had inspiration and that strong quilters gene that screams "Waste Not, Want Not!"
I had leftover cornerstone squares resulting from my obsession with systematically making sure that no two prints were side by side in my efforts to engineer this sort of scrappy little quilt...I took 3 squares of the interior prints and flanked them with two squares from the border print and attached them to the long side of the "too small" triangles, used my triangle ruler to trim them up and problem solved!
Yes, there is more than one way to skin a cat...
 and save ones self from guilt and pilferation! 
 
All the while, the treasured, irreplaceable was calling my name...I bought this print about 5 years ago while visiting our daughter at school.  It inspired me, with tales of a beautiful dragon who falls in love with the golden haired princess who comes across him hiding in her garden...not the stuff of Lord of The Rings...something far more romantic...a little too romantic for Disney though...
I initially had the idea for a grand applique...but that would take away from my desire to simply honor this beautiful fabric.  I had at another time found a bit of one of the companion prints that went with it, and then an unrelated print that also fit well...but there was the need to find something to unite them and allow them their own space to shine...then I tripped across some creamy gold metallics and knew I had found my princesses golden hair and robes.  And if my princess were magically transformed into a dragon, wouldn't her scales be creamy and gold as well?
And so...with six prints, The Dragon Princess came to life.
The gold and cream prints that represent the princess's hair and robes and flank the "dragon garden" print are different colorways of  the same design.
The sashing that brings them all together are the scales of the transformed princess.
 
 
I don't recall whether I spotted this fabric first or if my husband did, but I do recall that he wanted to be sure that I had seen it in the little shop we found it in.  I remember standing at the cutting table wishing I could afford the entire bolt, deliberating and finally settling for 2 1/2 yards and running out of time when I decided later that I should have purchased more.
All these years later, he watched the progress of this top spread out on the dining table with interest and inquiry as to how it was going.
We both have fallen in love with it.
 
Now...who's going to accuse me of having an overactive imagination???
 
Thank You, HRH Sue...you not only let me play with your pattern and accepted my edits & ideas graciously,
 as any True Sovereign would,
but you provided me with the blank canvas to paint my long held story.
 
~Nancie Anne
 
 
 

6 comments:

  1. What can I say? Except that I am so glad that you are one of my subjects in La La Land!

    Thanks for all your work on this pattern, I LOVE both your versions.

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  2. A Village Idiot could never create such beautiful quilts! Well done.....the quilts and the humorous post.

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  3. Love both of your versions of this quilt ! Just wonderful !

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  4. Lovely quilts! So nice to see the same pattern result in two distinct and gorgeous quilts. Well done!

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  6. Your quilts are lovely and you are obviously not the village idiot maybe the Bard of the land since you spin such a lovely royal tale full of kind rulers, princesses, dragons, and the knight in shining armor (the spouse who encourages you).

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