Tiled Fabrics - Are They Panels?

 Since I'm knee deep in panels right now, and having great fun working with them, I've been digging out some fabrics I've found hard to use, but thinking of them as panels has given me ideas. 

Years ago I saw some fabric online that I loved so much, I ordered it from the UK. The line was Celtic Illuminations, and at the time, I couldn't find it from a US supplier. I didn't buy a lot of it, a pillow panel, a couple yards (meters) of the tiles fabric, and maybe one yard of another in the line. I didn't take a photo of the tiled fabric before I cut it up, but I found a photo online of it in a different colorway, evidently, Fabric Paradise still has some of that colorway in stock.

If you like this colorway, you can get it from fabricparadise.com, and if you send me a message, I have two squares of the larger version in this colorway I'd be happy to send you. I happened across the two large squares at a thrift store, but haven't used them. 

If you pay attention to the measuring tapes, you'll see each square is about 3.5" It's not exact. The strips between the squares are almost 1/2". I didn't like the idea of cutting off all the seam allowances and having only 3.5" squares, but I found it difficult to cut the squares apart at 4", because those skinny strips between the knots are not always 1/2", and I kept getting further and further off. I tried cutting them when I got the fabric, made a few blocks, but overall found it really frustrating and put everything aside. I had made some units with the other fabrics, found a blue I liked to go with my fabrics, so I stuck it all aside, but at least it was together. 

When I was working on my grandson's fantasy quilt, I thought about those fabrics, and decided some Celtic knots would go nicely with the fantasy theme so I dug out the fabrics. I also had some more of the tiled fabric on my fabric shelves. 

When I dug everything out, I had the one pillow panel, with the fabric I cut to put it on point. I had a stack of nine patches I had made, and a pile of HST's. Back when I had worked on this, I was not good about writing myself notes on what I planned to do with things, and there was no pattern or anything with the fabrics. It's been at least 15 years since I worked on this, and I have no idea what I was planning. These days I am good about writing notes to myself, so it I put a project aside, I can get back into it easily enough. 

I had no more of the background fabric I used for the nine patches and HST's, so as far as that went, I had to use what I had. 

I had enough HST's to make pinwheel blocks, and I used the blue to frame them so they'd be the same size as the nine patches. I used most of the HST's, and all but two of the nine patch blocks. I used a fabric from stash to bring out the rusts and browns in the Celtic knots. I would have made the border a bit wider, but this was every bit of the fabric I had.

Now to deal with the other tiled fabric. I felt like the Celtic knots in the nine patches looked crowded cut at 3.5". I really wanted to cut them at 4", the thing is, I could really only get every other tile at 4", and the others needed to be cut at 3.5". Could I figure out how to use them together in one quilt?

The answer to that was yes. I put the 4" cut Celtic knots on point, and framed out the 3.5" ones. Each block finished at 5". I used all of the one cut at 3.5" for this quilt, and have only a few left of the ones on point. 

Now I've got two quilt tops done, and I've busted most of that fabric line. Can I bust the rest?

I still have that pillow panel I put on point. I added some of the leftover HST's to make the two remaining nine patch blocks larger. I didn't have any matching background fabric, but I found some similar enough. I made some of the extra 4" cut Celtic knots and put them on point using the extra few triangles from my grandson's fantasy quilt. I still need to frame out the on point pillow panel, then I need to make the whole thing wider. I'm thinking interlocking rings going up each side of this center. I have to do the math to make sure it's all going to fit together. Would I have planned to make these quilts this way, probably not. Will busting this fabric get it out of my stash and result in three usable quilts, yes it will. 

I will have a couple units leftover, even after this third quilt, but I am perfectly OK tossing the extras into the orphan bin for now, or possibly trying to make a table runner. Just because I loved the fabric, did not mean I found it easy to use. Since I felt up to the challenge, it was time to get it out of the house. 

It also inspired me to use another tiled fabric I had in stash, but that's for next time.