At a glance
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5 yard cut, 180'' long by 44'' wide
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100% cotton quilting fabric, one continuous piece
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Quilt shop weight, closely woven and heavier in the hand than our Everyday cotton
- Meadowsweet, small sage flowers scattered wide apart on warm cream
- Wilderness Delights Collection, from our Sunday Best line
Sunday Best is the cotton we reach for when the quilt is going to be kept. It is denser and heavier than our Everyday line, closely woven, and it takes a crease and holds a quarter inch seam the way quilting cotton should. This one arrives as a single 5 yard cut, 180 inches long, ready to cut into from wherever you like.
About this cream
Meadowsweet is a warm cream, not a white. The flowers on it are small, sage green with a fine blush centre, and they are scattered a good distance apart. There is more empty ground here than print.
That emptiness is the point. A background fabric has one job, which is to be quiet, and most florals cannot do it because there is a flower every inch. Cut this into small pieces and some of them will have a flower, some will have half of one, and some will have none at all. Across a quilt top that reads as cream with something living in it.
Where this print works
This is a background fabric. It is what goes behind the piecing: the plain blocks in an Irish chain, the light in a nine patch, the alternate squares in a chequerboard setting, the ground for applique. It is also the safest low volume print to buy in quantity, because one background across a whole quilt is what holds the design together.
It is the light end of this collection. Understory sits in the middle and Nightwood at the dark end.
One thing to weigh up
A printed background is prettier than a solid and it hides more. It also hides your quilting. If the quilt is going to a longarmer for something you want to see, a plain cream or white shows the stitching better. If the quilt is going to be pieced, machine quilted and slept under, this is the nicer choice by a distance.
What to put beside it
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Understory and Nightwood, the mid teal and the deep navy in this collection
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Sage and olive, which are already in the flowers
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Blush and dusty rose to bring the flower centres forward
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Almost any dark, because a cream this quiet works as a neutral
Good to know
44 inches is the standard width for quilting cotton, which is what this is. It is not wide backing. If you are backing a quilt more than about 42 inches across, you will need a seam down the middle or a piece of 108 inch wide backing.
Buy two or more cuts and the quantity discount comes off on its own at checkout. Two cuts take 10% off, four take 15%, six take 20%.
Cream low volume floral cotton fabric by the yard, cut and shipped from our own warehouse.
