So about that Lucy Boston quilt....

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I did try to hang the quilt outside to photograph it, but it was too heavy and fell to the ground. Today my husband held it aloft, and while not the perfect photo, it's good enough.

This quilt seems to have had two lives; the English paper piecing blocks have been around a LONG time. Many were done, the fabrics not my faves, then I fully finished them earlier this year or late last year after a big PUSH when I had Covid last summer. While quarantining in my bedroom so said husband wouldn't get sick (not that it worked, but....), I sewed Lucy Boston (LB) blocks because I didn't want to touch/contaminate anything I truly adored, haha! Come to find out, these at times obnoxious, at other times sweet blocks from my early EPP days have wormed their ways into my Kawandi heart. And what's especially precious (not in a sickly sweet manner) is that this quilt is WHOLLY HAND SEWN.

No machine was employed in its creation. The back is a flannel twin-size sheet, the front is four substantial pieces of solid fabrics that I attached to each other with a running stitch, then bordered with long thin strips of some truly fave fabrics Kawandi-style as I adhered the front to the back with batting in the middle of the sandwich. It's like no quilt I have ever crafted, and that's not including all the LB blocks and hexagons appliqued in a mostly straightforward way.

Somehow the unappealing fabrics chosen for the EPP blocks work SO WELL spaced not too closely to one another. The prints for the hexagons are also a mix of old and new, so the whole thing beams with an intensely SCRAPPY vibe, kind of telling my fabric story along the way; Joann prints, batiks, fancy fabric from an online shop in Maine that I bought when first into this whole Lucy Boston thing. Some fussy-cutting, some not at all matchy-matchy within the same block, and loads of Why did I buy that fabric? LOL! Yet as I said, all that hither and yon coalesces into quilt MAGIC! Or at least I think so.

So many shockers about this quilt, and the biggest is how much I love it. Well, and that all the safety pins are finally out of it, hah! Which is great, because next week a fabric layer cake is supposed to arrive, which means if I can squeeze any sewing time into my busy Christmas life, welp, time to make a special holiday cozy for some beloveds. Which will mean fast sewing, lots of safety pins, then hand-quilting. A few days ago I decided to add some recently acquired Liberty autumnal fabric into it because most of the layer cake prints are the same value. It needs a little mixing up, which worked well for the Quilt of Grace. I think it will work for the next quilt too.

Is there anything else to be noted about this amazing project? Only that if something you have started feels very M-E-H and yet you can't completely release it, don't let it go. Maybe store it away for a time. Maybe a LONG time, or perhaps a sprinkling of hours, weeks, whatever, until suddenly all the passion and adoration and LOVE returns.

Because, hand over heart, I can say that if a crafty endeavor is meant to be, it will be. This quilt is proof that I don't always know the way to go, but am wise enough to allow better hands to lead me where I need to be. And now, off to other adventures!

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