Japanese mandala kalaidescope in violet and rose This one of a kind quilt evolved as a way to use a wonderful focus fabric that reminded me of a geisha kimono. The combination of clear lavender and multitoned rose florals used open space and clustered blossoms on cotton sateen which had a soft sheen. I made many, many fussy cut kaleidescopes and close the 20 choicest ones for this quilt. With kalaidescopes it is difficult to predict how they will come out and it takes a lot of fabric to end up with the really good ones. Some of these violet ones are exquisite (to me at least) and reflect the delicate character of the pattern. I used white fossil fern flannel in multicolored almond as the background center so the mandalas would stand alone. There is extensive decorative feather stitching along all the border squares creating a window pane design, as well as outlining the white top and bottom border. I used 4 different fossil fern solids (by benartex) for the outer borders in saturated colors of african violet, wisteria, alpine rose, and fuchsia to harmonize the centers and outer edge. The outer edge is from a horizontalcut of the focus fabric which shows the progression from violet to rose with some diagonal edges giving visual movement to the border. One inner strip is dark purple bali batik by Hoffman internationals with a feather top stitch. The very outer edge is a narrow deep purple flannel, one shade darker than the inner purple, to visually enclose the entire quilt and provide softness. This quilt uses stitch in the ditch on every seam. The batting is 100% organic cotton so it has less loft than polyester batting. Cotton batting is more in the style of antique quilts. The backing is 100% cotton flannel by Fossil fern for softness. The color is multicolored “pastel almond”, a very subtle wash of pastel blue, yellow, pink, lavender and green. It was hard to convey the true clarity of colors, they are very wonderful shades, richer than pastel but with a soft quality. The workmanship in this particular quilt is of the highest standard. This quilt is quite large, 82 X 72 prewashed absolutely one of a kind
