It's no secret that great fabric makes for a great child's or baby quilt. Designer Lucy Fazely, combined the fun Australian animal themed prints from Kanvas' Down Under collection with a inspired symbolic design to make a quilt straight from the Outback (and no, not the restaurant!).
"Down Under" designed and quilted by Lucy A. Fazely; pieced by Barb MacDonald; featured in The Quilter magazine February/March 2014 |
What
attracted you to the Down Under fabrics?
The
cute Australian critters were too cute to pass on!
How
did you choose yellow/gold as the tonal to pair these prints with?
I tried
many variations of blues and yellows to make this work and the yellow/gold made
the design pop.
How did you come
up with the block design? It looks almost like an elongated nine-patch, but not
quite.
The block design is
based on the Southern Cross (a star constellation that is prominent
in the southern hemisphere and is on the Australian flag). I did a
Google image search of the Southern Star and worked from there. I wanted the
four large stars all the same size, but placed in a formation similar to the
constellation - the top and bottom star are almost vertical from each other and
the right star is slightly higher than the left star. The best way to do this
was to use an original variation of a nine-patch block.
Why
did you choose friendship stars?
The
four main stars in the Australian flag are frequently shown with seven points.
I played with six, seven and eight point stars - appliqued and pieced. It was
the editor's suggestion to use the four point Friendship Star to
symbolize the friendship between Australia and the USA.
What
do you envision the quilt being used for?
Initially
it was going to be a toddler's quilt. The size changed with the design and it
ended up being a baby quilt. Adding Down Under strips for border(s) would make
it large enough for a toddler.
Anything
else interesting to share about the quilt?
The
smaller fifth star was initially planned as an appliqued five point star under
the right star. It was talked about including it as a web-bonus to the magazine, but was finally dropped altogether. The good news is that anyone wanting to add
a fifth star can do so quite easily.
See the entire Down Under collection from Kanvas here.
Find The Quilter magazine here.
Sunshine, blue skies, bluer ocean...exactly as I remember Australia from my visit! Darling fabric made into an adorable quilt!
ReplyDeleteI have some Australian fabric for Christmas someone sent me, adorable!
ReplyDelete