Flea Market Fancy Quilt

I have been a fan of Denyse Schmidt's quilt designs for quite some time now.  I remember seeing one of her quilt design books in college, or just after, and being amazed at the uniqueness of her quilts.  I remember telling my mom that if ever I started quilting, I would want to do something like that.  Despite this fact, I didn't really pay attention to her fabric lines until after the original Flea Market Fancy was out of production.  When I found out that a re-release was going to happen, I was so excited.  I called Strawberry Patches to find out when the store would be carrying the line and anxiously awaited its arrival.  While anticipating this new line of fabric, I started combing Flickr and Pinterest for quilt ideas.  I finally found the quilt below as inspiration(Echino, which is another favorite fabric collection, is what is used on the inspiration quilt).  I loved the conceptual juxtaposition of the vintage inspired Flea Market Fancy with the modern quilt design.  I also wanted to try quilting with Essex Linen.  I thought the texture would bring something different to the quilt.

'

I showed the inspiration photo to my mom and she and I set about trying to figure out the math for each block.  This is the part of quilting that is most challenging for me.  I guess I could always just buy ready made patterns to circumvent this step, but what's the fun in that?

This summer, I finally got around to piecing the blocks together.  I made one major mistake when I was putting the blocks together; I sewed all the vertical strips to the blocks without realizing that their was a directionality to each column of blocks.  I ruefully pulled each block apart and set about making a complete layout on my make shift design wall (i.e. a vinyl table cloth hung on the wall).

I tried many different layouts and color combos before coming up with the top I finally sewed together. I then had to come up with a back that I liked.

I thought it would be really fun to make the back of the quilt look like one gigantic quilt block.  I actually had to do algebra to get the dimensions right on this.  I never thought I would have to do that again after high school.  

I used irregular straight line quilting and am really pleased with the results.  The Essex Linen makes the quilt heavier than normal, but I really like how it looks.

The back is one of my favorite parts.  

The best part is that I still have a lot of Flea Market Fancy left over.