fleet and flourish fabrics

Today I'm happy to be a part of the Fleet and Flourish blog hop. This beautiful fabric line was designed by Maureen Cracknell and is made by Art Gallery Fabrics.

The floral on the bottom left is my absolute favorite from the whole line. It's SO delicious!

It didn't take long to come up with an idea for the fabrics. I was inspired by the Vast Quilt by Jeni Baker, from her book Patchwork Essentials: The Half-Square Triangle. It was THE perfect pattern to show off the large scale prints. I cut my blocks at 13'' square (rather than 18'' square) due to the size of fabrics I had on hand. It worked out very well!

Since I'm such a hard-core scrap user, it felt a little weird to cut into so much new fabric all at once. I almost forgot what that felt like...but it sure was fun! I made the entire quilt top (and basted it!) in one Saturday. I could get used to that. :)

Here it is, finished! I love how it turned out! I kept it simple by free-motion quilting loop-de-loops over the entire piece.

Whenever I make a quilt with an entire fabric line, I like to mix in a few choices of my own, just to add my own stamp on it. I only added two fabrics...this yellow ochre solid, and a yellow squared elements print from my stash (you can see just a touch of it on the left hand side of this photo). I like how the yellow pops from the rest of the colors and how it highlights the yellow details in the other prints.

 The backing is a mish-mash of things from my stash. It's kind of quirky, but I love it all the same!

I finished it off with an eggplant Kona cotton binding. I'm not a fan of cats, but this cat print by Lizzy House (from a few years ago) is pretty darn cute! It was a welcome addition to the backing.

The quilt is BIG, finishing at about 72" x 84".

While I was making this quilt, my oldest son kept commenting on how the fabrics don't look like me. I thought that was funny--and pretty astute of him! These are a bit of a departure from the usual candy colors that I seem to gravitate toward, but it was still a delight to work with them! My husband likes it quite a lot and thinks I should make another one...but this time a king size quilt for our bed. I'm kind of surprised that they still pay attention to my quilting shenanigans after all these years! I'm pretty lucky. :)

If you care to see what others are making from this beautiful fabric line, check out the other stops on the blog tour:

Feb 22nd ~ Amy Friend
Feb 23rd ~ Heidi Staples
Feb 24th ~ Amy Smart
Feb 25th ~ You are here!
Feb 26th ~ Brooke Sellmann

Feb 29th ~ Amber Carillo
March 1st ~ Nicke Cutler
March 2nd ~ Nicole Daksiewicz
March 3rd ~ Christopher Thompson
March 4th ~ Alexis Wright

March 7th ~ Jessica Stewart
March 8th ~ Stephanie Kendron
March 9th ~ Heather Bostic
March 10th ~ Ali Brorsen
March 11th ~ Melissa Kelley

March 14th ~  Maureen Cracknell Handmade