A delightful European family hosted me and my husband for several days on rather short notice. The hostess helped me locate a quilt shop, and fell in love with the array of fabrics. Apparently, the fun, novelty prints are only available in speciality shops, which may be few and far between. They are expensive, and then, they are only useful to people who sew. The two boys, ages nine and seven are typical boys, interested in bugs and animals. The hostess liked simple flowers and owls. I found a wonderful novelty print here in the States of whimsical jungle animals which I’d like to use for a table topper for their garden, where they eat most of their meals, weather permitting.

The problem I face is that the fabric design is a combination of differently sized blocks and rectangles. If I fussy cut, I can get the 1/4" for one block, but have no allowance for the one adjacent. This will result in a lot of “waste.” (Could be used as I Spy in another quilt, but reduces the available designs available for the table topper.)

The only solutions which come to mind is: 1) to strip the odd blocks with a tonal, log cabin style, to obtain a uniform size. After which the blocks could be assembled with the tie-dyed matching print in the line. 2) paper piecing, which is not something I really want to do that for this application. 3) simplify everything by simply using the fabric as a whole cloth, forget the owls and daisies and use the tie-dye as a border. This doesn’t look too cool.

Any brilliant ideas out there? I’ve searched the archives, and didn’t see anything which I thought was useful.

Love the fabrics, owls and daisies are my all time fav's I have no suggestions but will be watching this to see what these brilliant quilters on here come up with!

Love the fabric. Ideas - You could cut each picture out along the frame line, then cut the frame to 1/4". Then reframe the pic. with fabric of choice, To make blocks the size you want, either round-robin style, or mix small with large using your background fabric (the bron maybe)) as a spacer. Tie dye for border. The daisies would make a nice backing.

Regardless of what you choose, it will be beautiful.

I like the log cabin approach. Looks like you are going to loose the blue in the main fabric, though. I would not go with whole cloth... I'm also not sure about the daisies... maybe a very narrow strip of them, but I'm not very experienced in fabric selection ;-)

Ye gods, that's a pretty but bloody awkward fabric. How about cutting it into a few large pieces, which don't all have to be the same size?

I think you understand my situation.

Cut each picture out and applique it with a satin stitch to your sashing. Be sure to stabilize it when using satin stitch. You could also put fusible web on the back to help keep it in place.

I agree completely with this idea and losing the blue when you fussy cut the pictures out. You could replace the blue with another fabric to make them all the same size or use a combination of the bronze and blue. The daisies are over-powering so I wouldn't use them on the front unless they are for a narrow border near the edge.

I'm not crazy about the daises either. If I did anything with them on the topper, it would be random cornerstones. The mum liked the daisies, but there is only about a meter of it. It may be that they get worked into a tea cozy and pot holders.

There is only a 1/4 inch of blue between some of the animal motif's, so that would be in my seams. No way to keep it. I've been studying the EQ block library to see if I could set them into some other block patterns, then arrange. I'm getting nothing but headaches.

Thanks, and keep the ideas coming - something just might click.