Give Me Liberty (fabric) or Give Me (more) Liberty Fabric

I am madly in love with Liberty of London fabrics. I've been to London twice, and during each visit, went to the beautiful Liberty store every day, spending an hour or two in the different, wonderfully bohemian departments.

This quilt, a WIP, represents much of my cache of Liberty. Every day I'd buy a little bit--usually quarter metre cuts--and gaze at them til the next morning when I'd set out again. I simply couldn't buy everything during one visit--it would have been like a sugar overdose and I would have collapsed in a pile of fabric. So: I purchased in installments, which kept me returning day after day after day. And happy.

I find it tremendously difficult to cut into Liberty fabric but really wanted to create a fabric collage, so I decided on largeish squares and rectangles, so as to keep the integrity of the floral patterns intact. I began this quilt when I had only one child and found it difficult enough then to do all the hand piecing and quilting (I designed a maze pattern for the squares, a simple grid for the rectangles).

And so, and so, my quilt is about 1-2-3/4 quilted, five years and two more children later. If I complete the Bento Box quilt top (below), I think I'll tie it, because I would love to finish a project during this decade. I have more unfinished quilts too, these begun when I was a graduate student, sans children, and still needed more time for the intricate quilting I had started. I'll show them soon.