The Princess Prefers Her Palace

This week I finished my second quilt using the fabric from our quilt guild's fabric challenge.  The first quilt was a combination snowball/bow tie block.

This second quilt is a pictorial quilt, and it measures 46" wide x 40" tall.  I hope you're in the mood for a story, because here it comes.

The challenge fabric is the black fabric with circles - Juggling Summer, part of Moda's Zen Chic collection by Brigette Heitland.  

For this second quilt, I wanted to pair it with the princess and the pea bed from Heather Ross's Far Far Away collection that I bought at The Sewcial Lounge.  I knew I wanted to build a house or some type of structure around the princess.

Initially, I was going to call this quilt "Princess Has Horrible Night".  In this text print from Carrie Bloomston's Paint collection (which I also bought at The Sewcial Lounge), I found that phrase.  It seemed fitting for a princess that couldn't sleep because of the pea under all her mattresses.

I was going to make a mini-newspaper, fussy cut around those words, and work it into the quilt.

The quilt was going to be filled with all the noisy things that kept her awake - frogs, fireworks, telephones, drums, etc.  But I just couldn't get the retro fussy cut images and text to fit with the princess; the styles were too different.

I redesigned it and drew a little sketch of what order I would sew the pieces in.  Once I had this sewed together, I was disappointed and distressed.  The whole thing felt so negative and the colors were too harsh.  

I almost wanted to give up, but I had told a lot of people I was making two quilts for the fabric challenge.  I didn't want to be a quitter, so I kept at it and came up with a third plan.  Sometimes three times really is a charm.

Now we come to the final design.  This central part stayed the same through all three iterations.  

The princess takes her first trip to the Big City, looking for excitement.  
But uh oh:

• the mattresses aren't working for her

• she hates the wallpaper (challenge fabric) in her hotel room

• it's too hot (orange fabric)

• the buildings are crowded together (house fabric next to orange fabric)

• and there are fireworks going off 

The "fireworks" fabric is by Sarah Watts from her August collection offered by Cotton and Steel - I bought it at The Sewcial Lounge.  The roof fabric is by Jeni Baker.  It's from her Nordika collection and I bought it at Mill House Quilts, although you'll find lots more of Jeni's fabric at The Sewcial Lounge.

 

The hotel the princess is staying at is on a busy street and fire trucks are going by all night long.

She thinks back to yesterday, when she was still home.  Instead of fireworks in the sky, there are soft breezes filled with the scent of flowers and gentle colors.  Frog ponds abound, as do meadows.  The frog and meadow fabrics are also from Heather Ross's Far Far Away collection.

Instead of the crowded city, there's her castle.

Here's the front again - the harsh city fading out to the free and relaxed kingdom she can't wait to get back to.  The Princess Prefers Her Palace.

The back uses up the rest of the Heather Ross fabric, along with a yard of umbrella fabric, just because the colors worked.

Because I started this quilt last Friday and finished it on Tuesday, I did simple quilting.  I'm showing the stitching from the back, because sometimes it's easier to see that way.

Most of it was vertical lines, except for the "nice" sky where I free motioned around the large flowers.   I also free motioned around the mattresses on the center front (not shown here), because I did that piece last, and there was a lot of bulk to take up.

A really simple label, because I finished this quilt just two hours before I had to leave for our guild meeting where all the fabric challenge quilts were going to be shown.