I made this top in just one day just after Christmas 2008. I used a pattern from Material Obsession's first book called Retro Starburst by Kathy Doughty.



The big strawberries are by Marimekko whose bold designer fabrics I love. We had big 70's flower Marimekko curtains in my childhood home so once again nostalgia plays its part.



The big Blue flower and Love Birds panels are hand printed by Prints Charming which I'd happily discovered had their studio about 5 minutes from where I lived in Sydney. There's a few others of their fabrics as well.



I just pulled the rest of my fabrics from my stash and started sewing.


I finished this quilt top in 1 day but embarrasingly it's taken a year and a half to get around to quilting it. It was the first quilt I free motion quilted using my new Pfaff sewing machine.

To be honest I'd put it off because I needed to unpick the borders and to fix up some puckery and wavy bits. The red spots I'd used as interesting patchy parts in the border were some old fabric I'd had for a while. I thought I'd washed it but while it was out I used the rest of it to make a peg bag. One day the peg bag was outside when it rained and the dots all ran. Not good!! But lucky I found out before it was too late. I replaced the spots with some Alexander Henry day of the dead fabric which looks just as good.

I must say I pretty chuffed with my quilting. Its far, far, far from perfect but as a wise person once said "a finished quilt is better than a perfect quilt". I know I'll improve with practise.