The story of a determined pattern

This is the tale of a determined pattern.




I found myself with a Saturday afternoon free. Those of you with very small children will understand what a rarity that is. I knew that Steve would be gone most of the evening so I took advantage of the 50/50 split we try for on the weekends and said "I have an errand to run.." Then I took off for the drive to one of my favorite quilt shops.

Here's a dirty little secret: I don't like either of the shops in my town enough to call them my "favorite" quilt shops. One of them is stuffy and dark and it's really clique-y. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely to have a store where they recognize you and are happy to see you and hear about your projects and all that good stuff, that can make a good shop great. But with that store I get the feeling that if you're not part of their crowd they don't have time for you.

The other is a nice store with sweet people but geared heavily towards stitchery, needlepunch, and other textile crafts. And while they're one of the few stores I've found that actually carries Riley Blake fabrics, they don't carry Moda. With those things in mind I tend to make the drive about 20 miles further to the two stores in a neighboring town.

I tucked a couple of fat quarters into my basket and then spent the next half hour just... poking. You know, where you kinda tune out and just browse. I love that. I'd been meaning to try "Brown Eyed Girl" by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. but when twirling through the pattern rack I found "Eventide" instead. I stared at it and then as though by magic it leapt into my basket. Leapt, I tell you! It spoke to me and said "Take me home!" When I said "What?" it said "Quilt along!" I sighed and realized that there's just no arguing with a really determined pattern.



I got home and thought about fabric. My first reaction was that I had a Park Avenue bundle that still had the ribbon around it. Then I remembered that Thelma was using Park Avenue and that given what I'd recently done with Madeline's Good Fortune if I used Park Avenue too that would make me the Single White Female of quilting.

So I went with Rural Jardin. Well, mostly Rural Jardin. I pulled out all the leftovers from my MGF and some blue Rural Jardin that I had tucked away and started piecing. I know I could have strip pieced a lot faster but I loved getting each block together one by one. I'm strip piecing the inner border strips but where there's more color thought I'm going one at a time. And I'm loving it.

I had to get some of the lighter blue to do the big double hourglass blocks and that's not here yet but fingers crossed it'll be here by the weekend. In the mean time? My design wall looks like this:

And growing by the minute!