Perhaps ten years ago I began making "window" wall quilts -- a variation of the traditional attic windows block. Many commercial fabrics lend themselves to being cut into squares or rectangles and framed as windows. The whole then seems to call for an interesting but not overpowering border treatment.
The above is called "Tang Horses" although I have no idea if the commercial fabric designer used Tang period horse motifs as inspiration. They were MY inspiration because I saw an exhibiton of Tang dynasty artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum, walked home remembering I'd been give some scrapes of the fabric by my friend Lynn from Florida who'd made a quilt for her daughter with the fabric. Within a week I had finished this which became and remains th largest of the windows series, it's about 48x48. The borders please me and I actually I like the fact that I had to use partial horses because that's all I had. I think it makes the whole more interesting that it would have been if I had had a lot of the fabric and had been able to carefully cut squares with horses perfectly centered in each.
This is my next to favorite from this series. In this case, not because of the pictures, although I like to use toile for the windows series. In this case, I had a fabric with several complex strips which became interesting window frames. It just gave me delight to use the complicated stripes that way.
I don't know how many windows quilts I've made. I've given away several, sold several, and at the moment have a dozen, including these two, which I hope to sell at next month's quilt show boutique. As I've written before, it's the fun of making that I enjoy. But once made I'm happy for them to go to other homes, preferably not to the top shelves of my too crowded closets.
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