Any sufficiently advanced technology....

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." (Albert Einstein)

Magic Tiles was a quilt I created from a pattern I purchased from the website of a woman from whom I purchased a number of fat quarter assortments off of eBay. At this phase of my quilting journey, I was searching for different styles of quilts to attempt, with a preference for wall hanging sized quilts. This quilt is also a bit of departure for me since it is primarily purple, rather than my preferred color wheel style. It does, however, continue my preference for black as a background fabric.

Even though I had just recently finished a pair of braid quilts that used hundreds of colors, including a wide variety of purples, I concluded I just didn't have enough "good" purples to give me a nice selection of 9 different fabrics to make this quilt. That's pretty typical for me...regardless of how large my fabric stash becomes, the quilt I'm currently working on always seems to require something I don't have. Amazing how that works out, no?

Anyway, it was off to the quilt shop again. This time it was my first trip to Cambridge Quilts. Even though this is in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston, this shop is not easily reachable via public transportation. To get there, I need to take the T up north, then either take a bus to the shop or walk slightly over a mile from the T station to get there. Since I actually enjoy walking, I chose the latter option.

This was a fairly nice shop, with a reasonable fabric selection. I've not been back since this one trip, but that was largely because of the inconvenience of getting there. I was able to flesh out my selection of purples rather nicely on this trip. I also added a number of other fabrics to my supply. When I took my stack of fabrics up to the cutting table, the cutter inquired as what I was making. I sort of gave the off-the-cuff reply "a fabric stash". I've come to use that phrase an amazing number of times since then!

Anyway, Magic Tiles came together fairly quickly. This was a variation on a "stack-and-slash" quilt, where you stack 9 different fabric blocks and do a series of cuts and shuffles. When the cuts are sewn back together, you end up with 9 different blocks for your quilt. Even though I'm sure I followed the instructions in Magic Tiles pattern correctly, I must have made a mistake in the reshuffling somewhere, as each block has only 8 unique fabrics. One fabric is duplicated in each block. This is definitely in the category of a mistake that needs to be pointed out to be noticed. Oops, I guess I just did that :-)

This quilt sort of sat in my finished pile for a while, until this Christmas when I gave it to my sister-in-law Jeannette as a stocking stuffer. This was an attempt on my part to deflect attention from the fact I still had not dyed some wool yarn for her like I had promised :-)