In Lucinda's Garden

There's a pattern in a past issue of Fons' and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine called "In Lucinda's Garden". It is constructed around a printed faux applique panel reproducing images from a famous applique quilt called the Reconciliation Quilt. After staring at the pattern a few days I decided to make it, but I had trouble finding the fabrics locally and in the usual web stores I frequent. I did find the printed "applique" panel on Ebay, though.

I put the panel and the pattern away and didn't think about it for a while as I completed other projects. Then, last night as a rummaged through the storage drawer in my bookcase where I keep partially finished projects, I came upon the panel again and started thinking. Serendipitously, the same evening I got an email from Fons's and Porter's magazine webstore and they had a kit for the quilt, on sale no less. I was about to break down and buy the kit but was rescued by the fact that their checkout process was malfunctioning and would not include the discount coupon for the sale price. I shot off an email to their customer support line about the problem and left it at that.

A little later, I started thinking about what was in my stash, and whether I could mimic the look of the quilt using only fabric already in the house. I already had the panel, after all. So into the closet I went, pulling boxes and comparing colors. There's a work table in that room where the cat's bed (actually a cube) sits; someone using that table makes her irritated. You should have seen the looks she gave me as piles of fabrics grew around her doorway.

So, I moved to the floor, laying the panel in the center of an arrangement of possible selections, neutrals on one side, darks on the other, highlighted fabrics on the third. Finally, I had come up with a possible group of fabrics that would give the look of the quilt, if not the exact replication of it. On second thought this morning I need to pull a few more yellows, but I'm almost there.

To think that I almost bought another kit to add to my burgeoning closet. Another stash-buster. Yay!