Ananse Village

This is a retirement quilt that I just finished and have already given away to my coworker Sharon Bush.  I wanted to make her a special quilt for her 36 years at the post office.  She is a special lady, so I chose this pattern of african ladies and used the fabrics from the Ananse village scrap bag that I got from the PIQF show last year.  The border fabric is a special find from the remnant section of Stone Mountain Daughters fabric store.  It was an overdyed and stenciled fabric that I thought was a very unusual find for a commercial fabric store, but you never know what you'll discover in that remnant section.  Each of the black flowers looked like they were hand stenciled onto the brown dyed fabric.

As a retirement quilt, I would usually have my coworkers sign the front of the quilt and use it like a big card.  I so liked the way this quilt turned out, that instead of having everyone sign the front of the quilt, I kept the back of the quilt white, so everyone could just sign the back.

The pattern comes from a quilt that I saw by Pat Bailey at our Voices in Cloth show.  I talked to her at the show and told her how much I liked her quilt and the african ladies pattern.She said she would send me the pattern, but I ended up just drafting it from a picture.  I don't know what the size of her block was, but by drafting the design on my own, I could make the block size to the dimension that I wanted.  Pats quilt had sashing and a border.  I chose to just use the one fabric.  The same fabric was used as a binding.