Design Via Savvy Shopping

Over the past 5 weeks, I've been inching my way towards a quilt for my sister and her husband. They got married in November but since quilt presents do not emerge fully formed with the press of a button, there was no chance that I would bring a wrapped present with me to the event. At that time, I had started collecting some fabric for it, but hadn't even settled on a design. The design changed a lot as I toyed with a lot of options and variations on those options. The only constant was the color scheme: red, black, and white. My sister has always loved this color combination and they used it for the wedding, so that decision was easy. Then, at a SE Michigan Craft Meetup, Emily told me about Lake Street Mercantile in South Lyon, MI. In early November, I went to check it out. Their collection has some modern fabrics alongside, shall we say, less modern fabrics. They also have a nice little sale room in which I found the black and white "big harlequin" print (above left) half-off. Anyone who knows my sister knows that she is an excellent bargain shopper and, indeed, takes immense pride in her shopping savvy. I decided to design the back of the quilt around this fabric.

My sister claims she only reads my blog when I post about travel (how she knows when this happens, I'm not quite clear. Perhaps my mother passes on the information). In any event, while I'm tempted to show the full front and back "flimsies" -- the pieced front and back before being quilted -- I'm going to stick to partial pictures of each. In the case of the front, the wrong side will have to suffice. I'm going to baste the quilt as soon as I finish posting, so hopefully I'll have a quilted and bound quilt to reveal soon. I may need to get some more fabric for the binding, however, as I forget how much fabric the binding of a big quilt requires.