Moroccan Tile Quilt

This is a quilt that I am making for a very dear friend of mine who has broken my itty bitty heart by moving away from New York to Indiana. As we get older I find it gets harder to make friends whom you identify with fully, whom you can cry on or tell off - an unconditional sort of friendship - warts and all.

I used in this quilt a pashmina that this friend had unceremoniously thrown at me saying "perhaps you can recycle this into something." So when she said she had to move away I thought maybe I could recycle into something just for her. I forgot to take a picture of the whole pashmina before I began cutting -  but here is a glimpse of what it used to look like. It is full of pretty pinks and aqua blues.

Luke helped me select the fabrics during his stay from a the handy pile of ever so gorgeous peppered cottons (my new obsession) - the purchase of which was the fault of Earamichia who recently introduced me to this fabric.

I chose the simple but lovely Frienship Star block for the quilt. (Quietly sobbing here!)

My friend - who has always wanted a full on Moroccan style party - was the source for the quilting inspiration. I was looking at all things Moroccan and decided to use the patterns I found in hand-painted Moroccan tiles as the free-motion quilting patterns.

You might (or might not) see where I am going with this idea.

I have through this project become quite obsessed by this idea of quilting tile patterns into a simple square quilt tops.  I hope to take this idea further next year.

I made my own template out of cardboard to help me mark each square quickly.

I had some 20 designs sketched up on paper.

And then  I went to it - using a gold thread to draw a tile pattern on each block.  Some are more complex than others - I found the ideas and variations on the tiles just kept coming.

Want to see what the finished quilt looks like? Stay posted ....