Our quilt guild is having a show in July and of course there is a quilt show challenge. The title of our show is "Quilts are Homemade" and we were required to put a house somewhere on our quilt. We were also required to use homespun fabric somewhere in the quilt. I wanted to do something that felt French-inspired and included cats!
I searched for patterns and eventually decided on doing applique Iris' to represent the fleur-de-lis and landed on patterns by Marie Webster. Her iris was perfect with a slight modification as I didn't want to spend forever appliqueing all those tiny bits and pieces. My eyes and hands aren't what they used to be!
My house is a free pattern from Le Rouvray and I modified it to suit my purposes too. The homespun component is my roof--I might add that I really hate homespun so that alone was a challenge to include in any of my quilts. The little window boxes were cut from fabric I purchased in Pairs last year. I was thrilled to be able to use it on this project. Of course there are cats in each window!
In the end I was quite pleased how the quilt turned out. I did try a different approach to applique as I typically do a traditional needle turn technique where I baste all of the pieces beforehand but this time I tried back-basting and I really liked it! I just may do a little more applique now.
Cheers!
Debi
