Safari - a Shifting Shadows Quilt

Not to disappoint, here's the story of Safari,

my prototype for the Shifting Shadows pattern.

For many years, a bundle of three fabrics sat in my stash, waiting for the right pattern. Who knew that I would end up making/writing one to fit the fabric?

After cutting up the print into 5 1/2" squares that featured the cute animals, I was left with a mess of swiss cheese.

Hmm, save this for later. It may be useful, no matter how hole-y!

Wanting a large block, I started with what I thought was a proportional shadow size. After sewing all of the blocks, I determined a shadow needs to be rather narrow. So off went a smidge of shadow, for a final block size of 6 1/2". Reasonable size. Check out the 6 inch Shadow Block Tutorial to make your own!

Then the creativity kicked in for the block arrangement and the sashing, and presto! a quilt was born.

The front used two of the three fabrics in the bundle, the animal print and the color washed background. Designing with a  modern bent, this quilt does not have borders, and looks great in the pretty pastels.

Now for the back. Still had fabric #3, which would have also been cute on the front. Love the folds, don't you?

Well, said fabric was too small for the back, but if I turned it, 

the width was perfect. All I needed to do was add 12 - 15".  
Enter the swiss cheese. Staying with a length of 5 1/4" (totally random - it fit the fabric!), I started cutting various widths, ending up with a stack of usable fabric (bottom), some pieces for the scrap bin (right), and pieces to the trash (left).

Since the widths varied, I sewed them with leftover shadow fabric, arranging them in narrow to wide and wide to narrow rows, with the background sashing in between the two rows.

Cutting into a third of fabric #3 and stitching in the panel, now provides a backing that is a perfect size for the quilt.

As for quilting, I used my favorite panto Bluster,

which is nice, but this quilt design really needs custom quilting. And that's why Jungle was created, 

which has it's own story for another day.

Stay tuned!