Ribbons and Wreaths

 

I'd had this wreath fabric in my stash for a few years. I don't remember where or when I bought it, but I think it's very pretty. 

One would almost think it's a Christmas fabric, with green and red being the dominant colours, and those flowers in the corners could pass for poinsettias. But the other flowers and the butterflies are certainly not Christmas. And I double-checked the selvage to see what the fabric line was called. It said something about "Australian" and nothing to indicate that it was Christmas. 
So, I was determined to use it in another of the 5 quilts. The difficulty with this kind of fabric is that it works best to use it either as one whole piece, surrounded with a border, or as individual panels. Unfortunately, there is often distortion with printing the fabric and the panels are not necessarily straight with the grain, or perfectly square. And if there isn't a definite border to the panel. one has to decide where to cut. In this case, I chose to cut right through the centre of the flower sashing. And then one might discover that the panels are not a reasonable measurement that works well with an alternate quilt block. These panels are not even square, and measure about 10" x 11¾", for a finished size of 9½" x 11¼", so rather weird dimensions. Which left me with the challenge of coming up with a block that would work with those dimensions. 
Inspired by a design in one of my 3-yard quilt books, I created a really simple block, and chose to avoid red and green as the colours to avoid the Christmas-y look. Instead I used the purple that is in the wreaths, together with green, and a beige Stonehenge fabric in the same colour family as the background of the wreath fabric, for the background fabric in the blocks. And I'm very pleased with how the quilt turned out. 

This is the quilt for which I had to juggle the backing fabrics. After determining the backings for the other 4 quilts, I was left with hot pink, which just wouldn't have worked with this one. So, I decided that the celery-coloured one that I had originally planned for Ashford Square would go to this one, the blue that I had planned for Butterfly Sanctuary would move to Ashford Square, and the hot pink would be used on Butterfly Sanctuary. The other two, which I haven't shared yet, remained with the planned backings. 
I chose Forest Floor for the quilting. It's not a really distinct design, so I really don't like it that well. But it's also not going to compete for attention with the quilt top. Another pantograph that I haven't used before. 
I named this quilt Ribbons and Wreaths because the effect of the cascading blocks reminds me of curling ribbon.