Outback Wife is the debut collection of Cathi Bessell-Browne for Ella Blue Fabrics - Cathi is an Australian designer and dressmaker with a passion for vintage floral fabrics. It is no secret that I love fabric and even though these colors and large scale floral designs are not usual style I was immediately drawn to them, and on impulse purchased numerous prints from the collection.
And then I had to decide what to do with these fabrics! Of course it was always going to be a quilt; a quilt with larger blocks to preserve and feature the beautiful floral prints. This simple improvised quilt layout with columns of varying widths (from 3 inches to 5 inches wide) allowed for fabric pieces of varying sizes to complement the scale of the designs as well as add interest.
This is a quick and easy quilt top to sew together, and you can take a stack of fabric pieces to a finished quilt top in an afternoon. The fabric play and layout of the fabric pieces however takes much longer. I spend quite some time pondering how to make these busy fabrics work together, which fabrics to add, which fabrics to omit. Arranging and re-arranging, auditioning fabrics, and removing those that just don't fit the brief. This is when a design wall (or in my case, a design floor) is indispensable.
QUILT STATS
Outback Wife Quilt - Work in Progress
Quilt top measures 50 inches x 65 inches.
Fabrics Added:
Large Scale Black Dot on Cotton/Linen blend base.
Japanese Chambray in Blue.
Pink stripe - from stash, no details on selvage.
Width of columns vary from 3 inches to 5 inches (finished).
The bark cloth fabrics were lovely to work with and are only slightly heavier in weight than standard quilting cotton but no more difficult to handle, cut, sew, and press, than quilting cotton. The bark cloth fabric base has a gorgeous texture and is much softer than I had anticipated. For some reason I had associated bark cloth fabric with rough and scratchy fabric, and I was very pleased to see that that is not the case at all.
Thank you for stopping by,
Rita
RELEVANT LINKS:
Outback Wife Quilt - The Finished Quilt
Sunday Stash #377 Outback Wife by Gertrude Made
More RPQ Quilts with similar quilt design:
Just Bricks Quilt 2009
Worn and Washed Quilt September 2015
Low Volume Scrappy Strip Quilt September 2013
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