flying mustangs

I haven’t been able to get this quilt idea out of my head since seeing this vintage quilt on Pinterest. I started one with Liberty and solids a while back, but I wasn’t feeling the exact translation of the design, and it’s been sitting on the design wall ever since. When I was thinking about a design using my new Cotton + Steel fabrics, I returned to this design, thinking that it might be a good one to show off those fun mustang fabrics.

This time though I decided to adjust the design a bit – I decided to feature four of the Cotton + Steel prints (the mustang from Melody’s Mustang line, butterflies from Rashida’s Moonlit, and the turquoise and gold print from the Basics collection) and then I used a number of coordinating prints (many shown here, along with a generous addition of C+S basics thanks to Melody). I cut all the triangles for the flying geese by hand so they’d be a bit wonky, and added in some solids in places so it wasn’t so predictable.

One would think that with my stash of solids I’d be able to find coordinating solids for this quilt, but no. Nothing was quite right, except for these double gauze solids (blue gray, indigo, light gray and light mustard). I didn’t have enough of any one of them, so I decided to use them all. I love double gauze fabrics in a quilt, but didn’t quite think through how many tiny pieces would be involved here, and consequently how much shifting and trickiness I’d encounter (I definitely put my new Flatter to use on this quilt top!). I think (er, hope!) it will be worth it in the end, but next time I’d probably stick with quilting cottons in this type of design.

I laid this one out on the floor to take photos this morning, and as expected, Hazel just couldn’t resist — back and forth across the quilt. A brief stop in the center, then back again. Cute, for sure, but it does make for a challenge in photographing quilts!