A Quilt 20+ Years in the Making

A Quilt Twenty-Plus Years in the Making 

"Pennants" Design by Kaffe Fassett

I first became aware of Kaffe Fassett in 1985 when I lived in Seattle and was heavily "into" knitting and Kaffe published his book Glorious Knits.   In 1987 he visited my Seattle knitting group -- and -- remember this was before the World Wide Web was launched in 1991 -- I had no way of knowing how to pronounce his name.  As it turns out, his name is not "Coffee Faucet," as most people were prone to pronounce it, but Kafe (pronounce the "a" like the "a" in cape) Facet (like the facet of a jewel).   Kafe Facet.   I recently listened to a book that was published just a few years ago in which Kafe was mentioned, and the narrator called him Coffee Faucet.   Oh well.

Then, in 1997 he published his book Glorious Patchwork and I fell in love with the quilt on page 39 of the book (below) -- the design is called "Pennants" and I immediately decided that I wanted to make this quilt.

I started out by purchasing a yard of fabulous 1998 fabric called "Nimba" by Alexander Henry (a premium fabric house).   I  initially bought only a yard of the fabric thinking I'd be using part of it to cut into pennant shapes for the quilt, and I'd use the rest to make a throw pillow.  After hanging out with the fabric for a few days, I decided that I wanted to use it for the backing of my quilt, and went back to buy major yardage.

I used "Nimba" as the guide for the colorway for the quilt top and went into major purchasing mode.  If you're at all familiar with Kaffe's work, you know that he is beyond bold in his fabric combinations, so I decided I could be bold, too.  The fabrics (at least 100 different fabrics) that I chose for this quilt range from truly funky old "great-grandma" prints and plaids to wild Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt style prints. I bought mostly 1/8 yards of fabric, and they all had to be washed and ironed.

Then came what seemed like endless cutting of pennants followed by laying out the pennants to combine them into 6-pennant squares.

However, not knowing much at all about quilting, I had NO idea what I was getting myself into -- I'd never heard of paper piecing and this was a paper piecing quilt.  So I had to teach myself how to paper piece.

And I soon discovered that I'd possibly "cut off more than I could chew."  I wanted this quilt to be big enough to fit a double bed, which meant it needed to be much larger than the wall hanging quilt pictured in the book.

I went into total stall when the quilt top reached twin bed size and it was packed away in 2000 when I left for Florida to care for my terminally ill father.

About two years ago I began unearthing my UFP's and decided it was time to finish this fabulous quilt.   And I went into stall yet again.  It was an unwieldy project and I didn't have a permanent spot to set up my sewing machine and if I was ever going to finish the quilt, I needed a sewing room.  

So, it took me about two weeks, but I completely cleaned out my Fibber McGee bedroom (if you don't know who Fibber McGee is, you need to watch the YouTube video of Fibber McGee's Closet) from top to bottom, moved all my sewing and knitting gear into the room, and set up a sewing/knitting studio with a guest bed.  What a difference to have enough room to work on such a large project!!!!

I discovered that I had cut out enough fabric pennants to make about two quilts -- but I was limited in the size I could make the actual quilt by how much Nimba fabric I had purchased back in 1998.

With the quilt top finished, for just a second I thought that I would learn how to use the long-arm quilt at the South Valley Senior Center and quilt it myself.  I really like to do things myself.  But that wasn't practical -- you only get to use the machine for two days and it requires standing all day under fluorescent lights -- neither of which are good for my body -- so I researched the long-arm quilters in Albuquerque, and off went my quilt top to The Tea Cup Quilt Shop here in the North Valley of Albuquerque where it got in line behind about 30 other quilts (seems to be the average number of quilts in line at all the long-arm quilters' businesses).

I asked Brandi Perea, the shop owner, to let me know when she was ready to start working on my quilt so that I could take a few photos of the quilting in progress.  And here she is, at work on my quilt:

You can get an idea of the size of the quilt in this third photo -- part of it is folded under on the floor, and part of it is still on the roller.

And here's a close-up -- check out some of those funky old great-grandma plaids in combination with some new batiks!

While the quilt was at Tea Cup, I remained busy in my new sewing room, and made nine throw pillow covers, two bed pillow covers, and I still have enough pennants to make at least six more pillows.  What was I thinking when I cut out all those pennants????

 These are the 9 pillows that reside on my living room sofa.

Here are the two bed-sized pillow covers that are used on the bed along with the quilt.  Note the prairie points around the pillow covers (another first for me -- figuring out how to make prairie points!).

While I was making pillows, I kept thinking about the name printed on the selvage edge of the backing fabric --  Nimba.  So, I had to Google it.

Could it be a Spanish word?  Like Samba.  Rumba.  Nope.

Well, there's a proverbial East Indian tree called Nimba that supposedly bestows perfect, complete and imperishable health to everyone.  Well, maybe????

Could it be an African word?  Yep.  Nimba is a county in Liberia in Eastern Africa.  But why would a fabric be named after a county?  There is also a National Forest called Nimba.

I was so intrigued about the origin of the name of the fabric that I e-mailed the customer service department of Alexander Henry, asking if anyone currently working at Alexander Henry had been working there 20 years ago and knew anything about the origin of the name of the fabric.  A very very kind customer service rep did some research for me and discovered that the fabric came from a 1998 collection called "L Afrique" -- so -- it's official -- we're going with the African roots of the word!!

And the rep found a list of the other fabrics in the L Afrique collection:

“Masai”

“Katanga Stripe”

“Mogambo”

“Zambian Jungle”

“Zebra”

“Rain Floral Batik”

“African Diamond”

“Keepers of the Tribe”

“Zaire”

“Mongalla Geometric”

“Nigeria”

“Lake Dembea”

“Kente”

“African Stripe”
“Kamba Tye Dye”

But he had no further information as to the name of my particular fabric.

Since my fabric looks like a tropical forest to me, I've decided that it is indeed named after the Nimba Forest.  Here's a photo of the selvage edge of the fabric showing its name:

After Brandi returned my quilt top, it was time to trim all the edges -- top, batting, and backing, then bind the edges.  I was excited to finish the quilt -- and here's the final result with the two matching bed pillows atop the quilt:

If I run out of other projects during the coronavirus pandemic, I still have all those extra pennants that can be turned into yet more pillows!