When I was growing up my mother had a skirt



made from this fabric:



Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you - we see London, we see France, we see lots of underpants. I especially like the one where the maiden is holding a bag of groceries and her panties have fallen down around her ankles (third from the left).

My mother wore this skirt a lot, and it's long gone, but she made a little pillow out of a scrap of the fabric, so I can still admire it today.

About 20 years after she died, I was in Bozeman, Montana for a wedding, just strolling around a fabric store killing time. I don't sew very much and I don't buy fabric because my mother left a little cabin half full of it.



I'm trying to use it up in the occasional quilt that I manage to crank out. However, I enjoy looking at fabric, to admire the beautiful colors and prints.

So, I'm just looking around the store and congratulating myself that I am not addicted to buying fabric. I literally said to myself: "I will never die with a bunch of unused fabric on my conscience."

The very next second I rounded a corner, and what did I see? That same fabric as my mother's skirt! 50 years later it had been revived! It's called Colonial Maids.



Of course I had to buy some of it. And they had coordinating fabrics that I had to also buy.

Here are a couple of them, there are more:






I want to make it all into a quilt, will call it Louise's Quilt after my mother.

She always talked about the Storm at Sea pattern. It is an optical illusion pattern that achieves what looks like circles (see the dark large diamonds) but all the edges are straight. However, it is very complex to make: many odd-shaped pieces to be cut out and sewn together one at a time.



I certainly don't want to die with this fabric on my conscience! I know I need to move on, choose another quilt pattern, and get going on it. The primary requirement is that it has to have large enough pieces that the Colonial Maids will show up well. Maybe this is the year, wish me luck.