The sincerest form of flattery..

I had been looking over at Nicole's blog at Sister's Choice and saw she'd been saying that she wanted a quilt like the Schnibbles called Madeline... only bigger! Then she had the inspired idea to skip finding one like it and just make a big version of Madeline. It was "all grown up" as she said. Nicole always blows me out of the water with what she does. The colors played so beautifully and she even was super helpful about how to measure and cut the setting triangles for the sides. And then she sent us over to see what Thelma had done and I was a goner.

A few of you may be familiar with Thelma over at Cupcakes and Daisies. She's amazing and her work is just breathtaking. I love how precise her work looks and how she's not afraid to fiddle with a pattern to make it work for her. She liked Nicole's big Madeline but needed it to cover a king sized bed. More blocks or a medallion in the middle? Medallion in the middle was her choice. Again the inspiration fairy struck and Thelma realized that the stars and layout of the Good Fortune Schnibble would fit perfectly in the center if she modified the border just a touch.

Presenting, Madeline's Good Fortune, is it not stunning? It just took my breath away. I though "I must have that quilt." It's bigger, more complex, and requires more precision than anything I've ever done before, but I figured I could maybe make it work if I took it easy and did it in bits and started with the big blocks before getting frustrated by the central medallion with its wee little fiddly bits.

Like some kind of glorious twist of fate, about a week later an online quilt shop I frequent got in almost all of the Rouenneries collection at $4 a yard. What I did next could be politely described as "overbuying" and might more accurately be called "losing my fool mind." I substituted some dark reds from other French General collections and got some of the pearl fabrics from Lumiere de Noel and then surveyed my hoard.

Yeah, I bought like twice as much fabric as I needed. The good news is that I'm now set for another project! Anyway. I knew I wanted to use the Fit to be Geese ruler I'd gotten for Christmas so I had to modify the pattern cutting requirements. I did some math and figured out what I needed and sat down and spent the better part of an evening cutting everything out and putting it in labeled bags. I was positively anal about the bags and it totally paid off.

So, long story short (too late!) I finished the top last week. The border fabric I'd originally picked ended up not working, the scale was just off, and the one fabric I'd really really really wanted could not be had for love nor money unless I spent $24/yd and ordered it from Australia. I'll pass, thanks. I let Steve pick out which fabric he thought would work and he was right, it's great.



Is it perfect? No, certainly not.



Point on the far right? Lovely. Point on the far left.... not quite so lovely. But A for effort, eh?
Rather than pick it out and make it super perfect I'm loving how I can see improvement from one block to the next, this quilt is big enough that I can watch my skills evolve across it.

These pictures are pre-border:




On the design wall it looks a little too brown. It also looks a little small but that's because there is absolutely NO way this whole thing was going to fit on the wall. So I did just enough to see how things would play together and then laid the rest out on the kitchen floor.

Here it is, sans borders, basking on the lawn:



And here's one taken today with the borders on. I really must get a taller place to take pictures.


I really could not be more pleased. Thank you to Nicole for wanting Madeline to be bigger, to Thelma for wanting it to have a medallion, and to Carrie for giving us the Schnibbles that made it all possible. I am so inspired by my fellow quilters, they make it possible for me to reach for things I thought were impossible just months ago.