Liberty and shirting - a finished quilt top

I am so in love with this quilt top at the moment!  I love the soft colours, the way the layour brings unexpected fabrics together, and the soft silky texture and drape.   Like all new crushes it will pass though...probably about half way through the quilting I will be utterly bored with all the prettiness and silky softness of the fabric but until then I will enjoy every moment.

I finished this on Thursday night, hoping to take it along to Perth Modern Quilting Guild show and tell at Calico and Ivy in Mosman, but a series of mishaps meant I left it at home.

I am a Liberty fan from way back, no doubt inspired by the smocked dresses made for my sister and I by my Mum and Grandmother.  I made Liberty shirts for myself when I first started working and dresses for my daughters when they were small, and I kept every scrap.  I started buying the occasional 5 inch pack of squares some years back before I had any idea what to do with them.

Back in May 2012 I had a number of my men's shirting remnants scattered across the floor close to my box of Liberty and noticed how well the soft colours played together.  The textures of the fabric were similar too, silky and soft.  The colour combinations remind me of vintage China.

 So I started playing around matching shirting with Liberty scraps, pairing up actual and near matches and cutting into some of my second hand men's shirt collection for some more favorite pairings like this...

and this..... which uses scraps from the quilt I made for my father

When I moved to Perth in June I bought this project with me so occupied some weekends finishing enough blocks to make a small quilt top and playing round with layouts.

There are a couple of blocks which in truth I think are a little dark and possibly should have been swapped out.  Two I have managed to place on the edges of the quilt, but the third is in the middle.

Here I deliberately included two small squares of Liberty Wiltshire Berry in a red/green colour way, a particular favorite of mine as it was the first time I bought Tana Lawn for myself (as opposed to 'borrowing' from my mothers stash! Hope you are not reading this Mum!)

This pattern was designed in 1933 and added to the Classics Tana Lawn collection in 1979.  It has been produced in a number of colours.  Even through these two squares are a darker tone and pop out in the wrong way, I have chosen not to replace them.

I have been working on the backing this weekend, it is mainly Liberty too. An utter indulgence given the price of this fabric, but I am thinking this quilt may live on our bed for snuggling in winter afternoons with a book.

I wonder how long it will take me to start and finish the quilting....