New York Roundabout

Awhile back, I designed and stitched a New York Beauty quilt using Benartex pre-printed foundations and Fossil Fern fabrics. I am pleased to be able to finally post a picture of the quilt. I call it "New York Roundabout". Fossil Fern has such wonderful colour movement within the fabric that the piece seems to glow. Foundation By The Yard is a super easy-to-use product. The blocks are printed on a fine cotton which does not need to be removed after piecing. You simply stitch on the lines and add your colours like a paint by number.

I had a wonderful assortment of colours for my palette:

The curves are gradual ones, and having the foundation layer remain in place keeps them nice and stable while sewing. I did not have to clip these curves to have anything fit, nor did the sewing require a special foot. This is my normal 1/4" piecing foot (#37).

In no time, the blocks were sewn, layered, and ready for quilting. I always begin with the walking foot and stitch in the ditch to secure the pieces. Then I remove the safety pins for some free motion work (the fun part!).

A flexible ruler comes in very handy for drawing nice curved lines.

Feathers arched around the outside of the central blocks:

...and loops were quilted in between the spikes:

A deep, rich purple was chosen for the binding.

Even binding the inside corner was not difficult as the fabric layers were so stable.

I did feathers, and loops and some straight-line stitching all to accentuate the feeling of movement in the centre of the quilt.

Then it was patterned and shipped off to Benartex where they printed the instructions and packaged them up with the foundations and fabrics. These kits are available at your local quilt shop; you can see the New York Roundabout on the kit page of the Benartex website:

It pleases me that these kits are also being distributed in Canada by Trend Tex Fabrics, so please ask at your local quilt shop.