Garden Fresh Quilt from Fons & Porter
I was watching a rebroadcast of a Fons and Porter Love of Quilting show (Episode 1506: Garden Fresh) recently. Currently this episode is available to watch only on Public Television. The guest on the show was Gail Kessler, who designs fabrics for Andover Fabrics.
It was very interesting to hear how the designing of fabric is approached. One thing that I found very fascinating is that when Andover creates a panel, it consistently has a 24" repeat. This being the case, the repeat of each panel must fill the area (selvage to selvage and the full 24") and elements in a panel are not always symmetrical. Gail's tip for using elements (or cheater blocks) from a panel is to trim them so that they are visually pleasing and not necessarily exact by measurement.
Herself a quilter, another thing that Gail strives for when she is designing a border print fabric is to give each 4 full repeats of the striped border across the yardage. This way only one modest length of the fabric is needed to be purchased in order to create all of the borders on the quilt. Don't you agree that it is very frustrating to need to purchase a great amount of yardage in order to get the proper amount of a border strip to complete your project?
Since the show was originally from April of 2010, the likelihood that this same fabric would still be available to purchase is probably pretty slim. However, the free pattern, Garden Fresh, from Fons and Porter is a real keeper!
Hope you enjoy
Reva
