My Own Home

I enjoyed the first set of quilts in Kim Diehl’s Simple Whatnots collection. I loved how the tiny prints in the Henry Glass Farmhouse line lent themselves to miniature table toppers and wall hangings. But I’m not so enthusiastic about the third group of Simple Whatnots. Many prints in the Gathering Basket line are much larger. So far I’m just not finding the quilt patterns quite as charming. “Home Again,” didn’t suit my tastes at all. So I pulled out my graph paper notebook and went to work. I increased the size of the houses from five to six inches. The stars grew from five inches to eight. I designed a more coherent border and tossed all but one of the background fabrics. The kaleidoscope, broken dishes, checkerboards and curved blocks came from “Simply Dynamic Sampler Quilts” by Marianne Hatton. My 14x19” wall hanging kit grew to a 36x52” lap quilt. One I can live with.