Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Working with a new design of an old block, plus an old favorite



The pattern that Kaffe Fassett named Jiggery Pokery in his book, Quilt Romance (Taunton Press, 2009),  is a variation of the Jacob's Ladder block generally known as World's Fair.  Here's a link to an antique quilt in the pattern.


This blogger made the quilt in the size Kaffe Fassett designed.  I decided that the size in the book was a little too big for me, so I reduced it slightly.

In the beginning, I was making it as a baby quilt, but was not at all happy with the way several of the fabrics worked with the overall pattern because they weren't reading light or dark.  Sometimes a void in the light and dark is interesting, but not so with this.  Long story short, I decided to pick out the fabrics I didn't like and had to disassemble the quilt by rows to do that.  Don't try this at home.  Ugh!

An interesting side note on this:  The text in Quilt Romance says that Jiggery Pokery is based on an antique quilt in Kaffe Fassett's collection.  If you look at the photograph, you will notice that there is a mistake in the way one of the blocks in the bottom are set, also as you go through laying out the blocks, there are several mistaken fabric assignments.  My guess is that someone other than the original quilter finished this quilt who didn't quite "get" the pattern and then may have run out the of the fabric that was needed to correctly finish the blocks.  Not to deny the whimsy of an antique, Fassett goes right along with the mistakes in his design.  I'm OC enough that I needed to do it correctly and that's how I drew my pattern design.
One of the first cars I owned was a red VW Beetle.  When I saw this fabric, I had to use it for the back.  The bias binding was made using one of the fabrics in the  blocks.
The baby quilt that I ended up making, was another baby bento box--my new favorite baby quilt pattern.