Perhaps You Will Not Find Her Common Now

Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin. Her favorite pastimes were riding her horse and tormenting the farm boy that worked there. –The Princess Bride, book and screenplay by William Goldman

Anyone seen The Princess Bride? 1987. Robin Wright. Cary Elwes. Mandy Patinkin. André the Giant. Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True Love. Ring a bell? Among my siblings, The Princess Bride is probably the number one all-time favorite movie. We can all pretty much quote the entire movie.

The designers over at Fandom in Stitches, organized by the talented Jennifer Ofenstein, are having a Princess Bride-themed quilt and stitch along. And, well, when I say the designers, I kind of mean me, too. I've tested some of the Sesame Street patterns for one of the designers and I have a handful of my own patterns over at Fandom in Stitches. But I was surprised and excited to get an invitation to design for the As You Wish Quilt and Stitch-Along.

Jennifer had the characters chosen and quilt design already laid out when block sign-ups began, but each portrait or quote block was left entirely up to the designer. I signed up for an embroidery block; Princess Buttercup's embroidery block. I had my design finished in a matter of days {it was one of the things I was doing while I was procrastinating working on P's quilt, but I couldn't tell you that because it was totally under wraps}. And then I started to dabble with a paper pieced design for Buttercup herself. No one had signed up for her and so I timidly said that if no one else wanted her, I would do it. A few weeks went by and she was still available, so I designed my first every portrait block. It is very different from houses and trees and that kind of thing.

I used this screen cap from the end of the movie and Quilt Assistant to draft the pattern. She's not perfect, but she's pretty OK. The nose was the hardest thing to get right. After I put together my test block, I made a few tweaks to the pattern, so hopefully she will go together smoothly.

The embroidered quote block for Buttercup is actually a collection of quotes. I couldn't narrow it down. After I started stitching, I realized that this was a pretty ambitious block, so I also did an intermediate and a simple version, which are both included in the Buttercup pattern.

Patterns will be released every two weeks through May 7^th. I've seen them. They are going to be fabulous. I wasn't certain whether I was going to make the quilt or not, but now that I've seen the blocks and Jennifer's awesome layouts {four-patch or book pages; I'm going with the book pages} there will be blood tonight a Princess Bride quilt at my house.

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