thebooklady27

  This quilt has a second name .."Another Fine Mess You Got Me Into Ricky Tims!"  :) ...because of the super-small mini piping that he showed how to make on a Quilt Show episode just as I was getting going on this quilt.  Nothing would do but that I added it around  the blocks in this quilt.  I ended up making 187 yards of 1/16th inch piping....yes, that number is correct, over one and a half football fields.  A fine mess... :) 

    I had always wanted to make a 'fussy cut'  pieced quilt,  such beautiful designs the fabrics make!  but I'm an appliquer at heart and a _terrible_ piecer. I do like to paper piece though and I figured out a way to use paper piecing for fussy cuts.  I converted regular pieced block patterns to paper-piecing because most patterns made for paper piecing, while beautiful, don't lend themselves to using fussy cut fabric.  As long as a block pattern has straight lines, even complicated ones, it can be turned into a paper pieced pattern. 

   I decided on 4 1/2 inch blocks because I like intricate quilts and the smaller the blocks, the more fabrics I can use!  I love 5 inch charm packs and I've found that I can do an awful lot with those little squares. The quilt has 313 four and a half inch blocks plus side triangles. Each block has the mini-piping on all edges, and I think it really adds a sparkle of color.  The piping is also along the borders and binding.    Besides the fussy cut pieced blocks I have also used Jinny Beyer's "Soft Edge Piecing" method  to add applique to some pieced blocks.   Each block is a different pattern, and each has some element of fussy cut fabric. 

    The name "Crown Jewels" came from the baffled look on the lady cutting up a stack of the really disparate and kinda odd looking fabrics I had amassed in one store....I tried to explain fussy cutting to her and that the quilt blocks wouldn't resemble the original fabrics at all ...and finally I said that the blocks would end up looking like little jewels.  From that I had to find a crown to use in the border and fill it with more jewels. :)  It looked kinda plain, so I quilted a gold sparkley starburst in the center of each jewel...then the gazillion diamonds on the inner border looked plain and I had to quilt starbursts on them too.  Did I mention that the quilt took 11 months to make? :) It is home machine pieced, machine appliqued,  and home machine  quilted.  95X95 inches. I thoroughly enjoyed making it and every day's sewing was different and interesting. A fun quilt! 

(My daughter-in-laws excellent photography has made the quilt set on a dark background.  I just wanted to say that if you look close it's a brown 3/8 inch binding, and not quilte so straight or wide as her photograph make it appear! )