Heather Ross Far Far Away Sand Castle Quilt

See who has been helping me finish up this quilt this morning?  Alexander kept busy while I was finishing putting on the borders of this quilt while Oliver was napping.  He's getting to be such a big boy these days.  He loves to help around the house and when I am sewing he is good company.  Oliver still is too little yet, but such a sweetie that keeps me occupied as well!  Oliver and I usually keep busy together in the mornings while Alexander goes with his dad to feed the cows or check the sheep, etc.  We have been going for daily walks now that the weather is getting warm.  I'm so impressed that he just turned one and can walk over a mile with me on our trail my husband built 2 years ago.  He just keeps going and going and never seems to tire himself out.  He kept his grandma busy walking with him for two hours straight all over the farm the other day so I am not sure what are his limits!

So, I bought a stack of fat quarters of Heather Ross's Far Far Away 1 just before it started to get scarce.  It was sort of a last minute decision for me.  I love the designs and the colors of this fabric, but I hate that it is double gauze.  It takes a lot of dedication to follow a designer into double gauze to be used as quilting fabric, let me tell you!  I hated working with it.  But, I think it was worth it in the end.  I was not too terribly original in the design I chose for this fabric. The pattern designer used Far Far Away 2 in her sample quilt.  It is a pattern by Chasing Cottons that you can find here.  I did change quite a few things though.  I added the solids to brighten it up and because by the time I finished the blocks I needed to add some stability around the double gauze.  Also there was no way I was going to use the tiny tiny scraps of FFA1 to make the scrappy border tiles so I used the solids instead.  This is a quilt I will need to quilt heavily to give it some stability but I think I will love it in the end.  It is intended to be a commission piece for a friend, but I'm waiting to see if the final effort of quilting is worthy or not...