Don’t tell my brother, but, his wife has been hanging out with me and my boyfriend Alexander Henry !
My sister-in-law has been visiting from Georgia and we were able to make a quilt top together.
I have been in love with the circles quilt in my new book Maverick Quilts, Using large-Scale Prints, Novelty Fabrics and Panels with Panache called Lovely Landscape. The circles are a wonderful way to work with a large-scale print and make an amazing quilt.
I have been working with this Alexander Henry fabric called Thunder Flower in the blue background (it also comes in pink). And the determined, powerful girls are just soooo appealing to me.
Alethea G (the other) and I found some of the Thunder Flower in RED at Stone Mountain and Daughter on our trip to Berkeley and, as red and green are an absolute favorite color combo for my niece and me, we had to buy some. And then we HAD to make a quilt!
We said Kapow a lot during the sewing time, so the quilt just got named as we were going.
We drew out a plan to use large chunks of fabric that were multiples of 6″. Then we cut out the big chunks of the Thunder Flower fabric and placed them on the design wall. We cut many 6 1/2″ squares and began placing them all around the girls.
We worked to place all the squares around the big pieces.
We used a new fusible product that is called Soft Fuse and, using the directions from Maverick Quilts, we made a circle for each square.
Then we auditioned all the circles until they looked perfecto.
Then we split it up into sections so that we could sew them together.
I absolutely LOVE how the circles are all from cool and interesting fabrics. We used dots and circles, flowers and even purple for a little zing!
This is definitely WHY we all need so much fabric! You cannot buy all of these different fabrics for just one quilt, but you can definitely take a little corner off of many of them to use in a quilt like this! Fo sho!
My favorite part might be where we added a leg to the quilt after we sewed it all together so that this girl could KICK!
We sewed it all together and began working on some funky curvy border (instructions are also in my book!) but Alethea G had to go home and she took the quilt with her. When it is all done, we will show you more photos! Happy Sewing!
Sorry that the color is so weird on this photo – I just couldn’t get it right!
Maverick Quilts 
I am so envious that you have a quilting buddy who is also your sister-in-law! That quilt kicks big butt! Oh, should I not use that word? Then again, I too am a maverick quilter.
Where’s Mavis these days?
Mavis reports that she has a new “man-friend,” Marvin. They have been “stepping out” by shopping for new a pocket protector and a fanny pack for their upcoming trip to the the 2011 Zenith Analog Appliance Conference. (He is a transistor radio repair man. (person))
That’s not just a circles quilt, it’s an ANIME quilt! You could become big in that circle too (get it?)….I have connections, so have your people call mine.
I love this Circle Quilt….WOW beautiful… Cathe