In 2014, my friends at Intown Quilters had a birthday challenge to honor Kaffe Fassett, who designs some of my very favorite fabrics and quilts. The directions were simple and terrifying. Entrants were to choose one of Kaffe’s older quilt designs and update it, while also using some of Kaffe’s more recent fabrics. In a moment of wild optimism, I signed up!
I’m so glad I did! Let’s get the suspense over with up front. I didn’t win. Red seemed to be a popular theme among the lovely quilts that were recognized. Mine’s not so red. And it’s possible that I updated a bit much on the design side. But I learned a lot and wound up with a quilt I adore. Bill calls it the “winter” quilt for nights when we need two. I named it, “Behave Yourself, Barely!” in honor of a story Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Este’s tells about a favorite aunt of hers.
My fabric selections for this quilt were largely to coordinate with my first queen size quilt, “Autumn Log Cabin”. Many are designs from Kaffe Fassett or Brandon Mably. Among my favorites are the purple Zinnia design and one of my go-to fabrics in several colorways of the Paperweights pattern, mixed with lots of dots.
I added an inner border of black and white micro dots and an outer border of a large scale, Asian looking floral. The backing is a wide width batik of larger black and white dots and the binding is the same black and white micro dot as the border. I much prefer random dot patterns to symmetrical dots. They’re way easier to work with!
I used a Hobbs 80/20 black batting on this quilt and washed it after finishing as described for my Liberated Wild Geese Quilt. Regina Carter did the wonderful long arm quilting.
You can find the “sunlight in the forest” pattern in Kaffe Fassett’s Quilts in Sweden, copyright Rowan Yarns, 2011.