My niece is the world traveller of the family. Before she headed to South America a couple of years ago we talked and I told her to bring back some fabric. I told her that if she brought back fabric, I would make her a quilt to commemorate her holiday. I guess I should have been a little more specific as to what would be suitable for a quilt, because this is what she brought back.

These fabrics are beautiful, but not your traditional quilting fabrics. They are natural fibres, although I am not sure just what. They are very loosely woven and and i am sure if i cut into the fabrics they will ravel.

The picture is not exactly true in colour–the piece on the left is bright yellow, not orange like in the picture and the piece on the right is royal blue, not black like in the picture.

Since the trip to South America, my niece has been to school in Denmark. While attending school in Denmark, she met her fiance who was from England. This May they were married in England. I asked my niece if she wanted me to make a quilt for her out of the fabric that she brought back from South America as my wedding gift to her. She jumped at the offer.

Now the pressure was on. What was I going to do with this fabric? I toyed with various patterns, all of which were discarded. I then got the bright idea to make a Trip Around the World Quilt–using the South American fabrics as the border to the quilt. I decided that if I treated these fabrics like I treat t-shirts and stabilize them in the same way as when I make a t-shirt quilt, I could arrest the ravel problem.

These are the fabrics that I chose for the center, Trip Around the World portion of the quilt. I lucked out and found a fabric line at Fabricland that featured all of the bright colours that were in the South American fabrics.
Today, I managed to get together 1/2 of the quilt body.

This is a closeup of the fabrics. Each fabric has the same navy blue flower outline. This outline ties the fabrics together nicely.
The newlyweds will be in Canada in August for a second wedding reception for those of us who could not make it to England in May. The pressure is on to finish this quilt quickly!