Hurrah! The Flower Fairies quilt top is finished! I was wondering how many people know about the flower fairies as it's very much an English thing to me. The artist, Mary Cicely Barker, published not long after Beatrix Potter, and came up with the idea of each English flower having it's own Fairy. I googled for more info and was astonished to find a very snazzy
website and a bit of a flower fairy revival going on. Who knew?
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| Corner detail and The Red Clover Fairy |
Back to the quilt: After much advice from various people, including my aunt in Austria (artist, non-quilter), my favourite graphic designer (hi Gary), and the Q4Q Facebook group, I decided to go with a thin green and thinner cream inner border and back to the floral for the wide border.
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| The Rose Fairy |
This is a bit of a heritage quilt for me. My grandma, who had a great love of flowers, bought the books for my mum when she was a little girl and she kept them and showed them to me. I
think they're 1940s editions but they may be earlier. (The first of these little books was published in 1923). My mum still has a few of the books which she had as a child - I was going to take a photo to show you how
old antique and
tattered loved looking they are, but I think they must be in mum's cupboard rather than mine. (At least I hope they are, or Bookdog [as opposed to quiltdog] has eaten them for the yummy glue that was used on book spines way back when. Ahem. Hope mum's not reading this...). Anyway, when I saw the Michael Miller Flower Fairy fabric, I showed mum, and she said "You HAVE to buy it". I'm not sure why. She's not a fabric freak, or a quilter, doesn't have a single bed, and neither of her offspring have done our duty and provided a granddaughter, so I put two and two together and decided she must want a wall quilt. Which, when I asked, she didn't. So I was left with the fabric...
This is how it turned out:
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| Top finished! |
There are SO many cute fairies in this one. And I have to say, it looks much, much nicer than the sample quilt pattern provided on the Michael Miller Flower Fairy site. All that is missing is someone who'd like a single-bed sized Flower Fairy quilt... Hence, it's going in the cupboard for a while before I quilt it. Too many other unfinished objects that can and should be finished first!
Beautifully done and nicely written piece too, Laura! I can't believe you completed it so quickly. I have a feeling when your Mum sees it, it'll be up on one of her walls in no time :) Congrats. x G
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