The design source...

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that at least some of you will have actually seen this design at its source, in person - though it probably wasn't a detail you paid attention to. I certainly didn't - though I was 13 at the time; I'm sure I would now, given my penchant for finding quilting inspiration.

It's a railing on the Eiffel Tower! (Though, to be fair, I expect the same or a very similar design has also been used elsewhere.) The best image of it is this one on flickr, which I've added to a gallery of other detail images I'll be using either as inspiration or to make my design accurate. My own (well and truly pre-digital) photos capture nothing like the detail I need, and I'm not going to make Eleanor wait for her quilt until we manage to take her and James (as promised) but she's quite obsessed with La Tour Eiffel, so it was a natural choice for her quilt.

I've been working on this design on and off for over a year, and have been frustrated to see that suddenly it's become quite a popular design for quilts in the last 6 months, knowing that I had my idea beforehand. Oh, well!

Over the last year and a half I've been picking up Eiffel fabrics whenever I could - not dreaming until recently how accessible they would become. But in the end, my own design won't really be using them, though I do plan to incorporate some of the map print. And so, a selection of these will be going to Kylie! Kylie, please contact me with your mailing address and I'll pop these in the post, along with the magazine.

Below are some of what I actually plan to use in the quilt: