Off to Paris!

Well, in spirit, anyway :)  Paris fabric is the theme of today's quilty finish.

I think I'm doing a pretty good job crunching through my UFOs. This quilt was started in November at a retreat - in fact, the top was finished there, so it's been in my "to be quilted" pile ever since.  The block pattern seems to be floating around the internet, but I didn't like the way it was put together. So I redesigned the instructions to make the block simpler to assemble, with fewer small pieces to mange. And then I realized that there was a big patch of open space in the corner, just crying for something to fill it. One of the original treatments I saw put applique there but I wasn't interested in doing that.

However, I had a lovely Paris-themed fabric that I picked up earlier lastsummer, and some coordinating solids to go with it. So I decided that this was the perfect project to highlight those fabrics.  I had only bought a little - 1 yard of the print, and 1/4 yard of each of 6 coordinating colours. So I had to get a bit creative with the colour placement, in order to stretch the fabric as far as possible. Twenty-four 12" blocks turned out to be the answer. And with careful placement, all of the Paris scenes are upright.

When I pulled this quitl out a couple of weeks ago to finish it, I needed a backing for it.  I didn't have quite enough of any of my white fabrics, and I was completely out of the solids I used on the top.  But I decided that I could make a giant block for the back of the quilt, if I could find some suitable pieced in my stash. Luck was with me - I found a very similar shade of each of the 6 colours, in tone-on-tone in my stash.

Happy to have one more UFO off my list, but that doesn't mean I'm not starting anything new. I was asked to make a sample for a local shop, so I put aside some other projects and  put this together this week.  It just needs binding and it's off to the shop on Saturday.