Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | By Liza Lucy | 1 Comment

It’s A Rosy Day

The quilt featured in the current issue of Quilt Magazine, called It’s A Rosy Day is the newest version of the very first quilt that Kaffe and I did together for the book, Glorious Patchwork.  Kaffe had a vision that he wanted to design quilts that looked like the antique quilts that he collected. They were mostly scrappy, low contrast, and somewhat worn. The patina that comes with age, mellow the colors so there is a kind of color harmony from the close tones.

The first Rosy was made from any large scale floral that we could find that were mostly pinks, beiges, sage greens, and other soft tones. In 1994, these large scale prints were not easy to find, except in home furnishing weight. Many of the fabrics we bought in quilting weight had to be tea dyed to get the colors just right for the project.

When we completed the first Rosy, we did a second one called Leafy Rosy that was made with many large scale leaf, fruit, and vegetable fabrics, mixed with small geometrics and calicos. The large scale fabrics were even harder to find in leaf themes.   It was an overall green quilt and it seemed to hit a note, as it was one of the most popular quilts we ever designed. It was clear to us that quilters were delighted to see large scale prints used in quilts.

Now, 15 years later, Kaffe revisited the Leafy Rosy but this time, there was no struggle to find fabrics. The Kaffe Collective produces gorgeous very large scale prints designed by Kaffe, Philip Jacobs, and Brandon Mably giving us an abundant choice of fabrics. 

The magazine has only been on the news stands for a week and already the response is terrific. We are thrilled.

The Rosy quilts are a simple formula of alternating  nine patches with large squares cut from big prints. It is scrappy and works in any colorway. Give it a try, make a red one, a blue one. It is fast and it is addictive.