Blogger's Quilt Festival - Madder Snowballs

I love drooling over pretty fabric as much as the next quilter, but it's rare for me to fall completely head over heels for a fabric collection.

I may want something a lot like whatever I see, but it usually doesn't have to be that exact fabric. Not unless it's that new Nancy Drew fabric, or A Walk in the Woods, or the line I used in this quilt.  I think Root of the Madder (from Connecting Threads and no longer available) is the first "real" fabric line I bought. I still love the colors and prints.   

Madder Snowballs is is a 50 x 60 inch (guessing at the exact measurements, but that should be close) throw, which I quilted on my Janome.  Some of the light corners are shirtings that I picked up at the quilt shop after I ran low on the real thing, but I couldn't tell you which is which. 

The biggest lesson I learned with this quilt was if I'm going to splurge on a collection of fabrics for the front, I'd better have a plan for the back. Most of my quilts are so scrappy it's not a problem. For this one, I had to place a second order for more fabric for the backing and binding. Instead of figuring out which was my favorite print, I bought four one-yard cuts and pieced the back.