Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairy Quilt

Look what I made in little snippets of time over the past week...a quilt!  (Yes, I do still have a queen sized quilt top that needs to be layered with batting, backing, and then quilted, but we won't talk about that right now!)  The design is my own.  Each square measures 6", and the whole quilt is approximately 59"x 77".

 

On a recent trip to my favorite fabric store, I came across this lovely panel of fabric by Michael Miller, depicting the Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairies.  I fell in love with the vibrant blues and purples and instantly knew it had to come home with me, especially since it was the last one.  (I couldn't let it slip away and regret it later, now could I?)  I had all the fabrics I needed in my stash to complete the piecing for the top, except I did splurge and buy the white print with pretty bluebirds in the snowball block because it matched so perfectly.  But it really wasn't too much of an expense since the fabric was on sale for only $4 a yard.  I adore little birds, and I figured that since fairies and birds both have wings, they could work together on a quilt.

 

Close up of the sweet, little, bluebird fabric.  I bought 2 yards and still have over a yard left over from this quilt, so I'm sure this print will show up in some future projects.

This quilt has two layers of cotton batting, as all my recent quilts do, because I love how warm and substantial this makes them feel.  I also always use flannel for the backing.  This one matched so perfectly with it's purple and green flower design on a crisp, white background.

I used a simple geometric quilting design across the blocks and borders, but since I didn't want random stitches possibly wandering across the fairies' faces in the center panel, I outlined each fairy with a simple machine stitch to hold all the layers together.

 

Before this quilt was even pieced together, Sophie claimed it for her own.  She was the only one of my kids for whom I hadn't yet made a large quilt.  Problem solved!  She was so excited when I said it could be all hers.  Every day she inquired about it's state of completion, and whether or not it would be ready for her to snuggle up with that evening.  Tonight is finally the night!

 

And just because I don't have enough fabric to keep me busy for the rest of my life, I purchased a second  Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairy panel.  How cute is it?  Stay tuned...