PQ 9.1 Hometown Love: Fairplay

 I had big plans for this week.  Big Plans!

I've lived a lot of different places so I had a number of wonderful towns to choose from:  two coasts, mountains, flat lands, small towns, big cities, impressive landscapes.  However, I quickly choose a place I've never actually lived.  I've never had it on my drivers license and I've never even had a mailing address there.  But I did spend a portion of every year from the time I was eight years old until now missing at most two years.  As a kid, I was in school or in this town so I feel like I grew up there.  The town is Fairplay, Colorado.  It is deep in the heart of South Park.  (Yes, South Park is a real place.  Yes the cartoonists are from the next valley over.  Yes that is a thing.)

Having decided on the town the pattern was also a no brainer.  I was going to make delectable mountains.  I'd made a table runner a couple years ago for the PQ challenge and knew it was well within my skill set.  I could make a lot of those blocks with relative ease and could therefore go quickly.  I looked on line and saw a variation that looked liked an Irish Chain.  It was perfect.  

Now for the fabric.  I recently found a box of fabric that had been 'lost' in the move double digit years ago.  It had lots of treasures including several sets of fabric.  I remember some of them. Others, not so much.  However, there was one set that I obviously purchased in a quilt shop. Most likely a long gone shop in Fairplay.  It has gorgeous columbine and iris fabrics and coordinating purples and greens.   Combined with a white background it would be a glorious tribute to my 'hometown'.

Looking at the picture at the top of the post, you can clearly see that there aren't any iris or columbine or mountains in my quilt.  You see, the math doesn't work.  I was going to make cheater mountains.   My 9 inch blocks would turn into 8 inch half square triangles which would turn into a rectangle that would be about 12 x 8 inch mountains.  Those are are rectangles.  Sewing two of them together makes a block that is 12 x 16.  Still not a square.  And I needed squares to make rotate and make the pretty chain looking pattern.  I spent much of the week convinced that I could add some to the middle and I would get the right shape and it would all work out.  Unfortunately, adding fabric in the only direction that wouldn't disrupt the pattern merely exacerbated the problem.  So... no simple mountains for me. The only way to make the pattern is to go old school with lots of bias and half square triangles.  By the time I figured that out, it was way too late to get the size quilt I wanted to make finished in time.  And besides, I couldn't find my triangle paper without which this isn't happening!

So, I pouted for another day.  Then I drew some sketches.  But my flying geese paper was too big and I was still pouting and not going to try and make up the 5 paper piece patterns I would need.

I started looking for pictures of Fairplay.  I found one of the Sheldon Jackson Memorial Church.  It is a church that is so iconic... well I have to digress and tell another story.  You see I got married in that church.  I was living in DC.  My then fiance  (whose family laid claim to come from from that next valley over) was in Michigan and my mom was in Fairplay.  There were logistics.  I bought my dress in DC and was looking for a veil.  I found one in a small bridal consignment shop.  When I described my dress to the owner (long sleeve, cotton jacquard) for an August wedding, I got the usual response.  "You are insane.  You will sweat to death."  But I started to explain that I was getting married in a small town in Colorado called Fai.... "Fairplay." the owner replied "in that beautiful little church."  It turned out she spent time nearby and always wanted to attend a wedding in that church.  So I invited her.  She came.  It was special.  The picture above is my flower girl sitting on a bench in the beautiful garden of that beautiful church.  A church so memorable that a shop owner half a continent away knew about it.

Back to the quilt...  I started playing with a picture and finally settled upon an sketchy version.  I printed it on fabric and then hand quilted/embellished with with quilting cotton and number 5 perl cotton.  I had to add some of the beautiful flowers from the garden and a hint of the Colorado blue sky.  The binding is a tiny strip of my favorite forget-me-knot fabric, as appropriate as the iris and columbine.  My stitching leaves a lot to be desired.  We won't look at the back.  This was a great project to ease me back into quilting and hand stitching.  (It has been so long I don't even have a quilts 2017 folder.)  I am ready to see what the next challenges bring.

The quilt is approximately 7 x 10 inches.  It is printed on cotton with cotton backing and binding.  The batting is a synthetic.  It is hand quilted with cotton and perl cotton.

Project Quilting is the brain child of Kim Lapacek.  You can see all of the amazing quilts produced in response to this challenge here.