Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a little pink cottage tucked deep in a magical wood... Come take a walk through our Fairytale Forest. Over the course of 12 months, we will meander through a magical wood filled with a kaleidoscope of color.
On our walk, we will stroll through groves of teal trees, towering coral evergreens, a copse of plum conifers, and thickets of aqua saplings. Eventually, we will make our way to a quaint, pink cottage nestled in the heart of the forest.
Quilt Inspiration
Lesley envisioned designing a quilt with a "cozy cottage nestled within a sea of trees." While designing the quilt, Lesley found inspiration from the year that she spent in Scandinavia. From hiking through beautiful forests in Norway to fantasizing about the whimsical, curved thatched roofs that she saw in Denmark, Fairytale Forest is a tribute to the landscape, architecture, and cherished memories of Lesley's time abroad.
Design Process
The Fabric Prints. Part of the design of Fairytale Forest was to showcase over 200 Liberty prints, with the ombre rainbow layout adding to the magical atmosphere of the quilt.
The Forest. Fairytale Forest was Lesley's introduction to foundation paper piecing (FPP). When she first embarked on this project, she tried to make the trees without using foundation paper and remarked, "It was NOT a fun process!" The switch to FPP helped her to achieve more accurate points and consistent tree sizes across the quilt. After much experimentation with block layouts, Lesley was also able to create undulating tree clusters using variable sizes of trees.
🧵 Fun fact: Did you know that Lesley originally sewed Fairytale as over 800 individual trees? It was chock-full of L-seams, so she reworked the original layout to be easier to sew together!
The Cottage. Lesley found inspiration for the cottage from the cozy thatched roof homes that she saw while exploring the towns north of Copenhagen. She paired a purple roof with a pink exterior to give the cottage the playful, whimsical character it needed to complement the magical woods.
🧵 Fun fact: What do you notice about the chimney of the initial cottage? In traditional thatched roof houses, the fireplace is often located in the center of the home. However, to add more balance in the final quilt, the chimney was shifted to the left.
Most Challenging But Rewarding Part of the Process
Figuring out the color gradient for over 200 prints was challenging in the initial design. Lesley wanted to create a seamless flow of colors without making the quilt look stripey or too geometric. To accomplish this, she created a color gradient that included subtle diagonals, which helps the eye to move across the quilt. It's hard to imagine that this simple sketch of colored lines was the jumping off point for the fabric selection for Fairytale Forest!
While the gradient might not reveal itself as you complete your individual Fairytale Forest blocks, as your trees and rows are sewn together, the gradient will start to appear. This is when the real magic happens!
Advice for Fairytale Forest Subscribers
It's easy to say but hard to do: Embrace the mistakes and missteps in your journey through Fairytale Forest. There is a lot to keep track of with over 800 trees and over 200 fabrics. Even in the sample quilt, Lesley recalls inadvertently making some fabric placement "errors". However, instead of picking apart the seams, she decided to leave the trees and the result was still majestic! Some of our past subscribers have even included some special patchwork trees in their quilts. So, don't sweat the small stuff and look at missteps as a way to create a quilt that is truly personalized just for you!
Our Fairytale Forest Journey
To date, there have been 10 rounds of Fairytale Forest, which equates to over 1,800 completed quilts! We are so proud to share this journey with our BOM subscribers and to those who have displayed their Fairytale Forest quilts in guild and quilt shows.
