Have you heard of Quilters Candy Box? I hadn't until just recently. Let me break it down – basically, it's two super sweet ladies who never forget your birthday and ALWAYS send you exactly what you want. Also, your birthday is every month.
Subtitle: The Life-Changing Magic of Beautiful Fabric
One aspect of sewing that all quilters deeply experience is the power of beautiful fabric. Beautiful fabric will make us quilters do crazy, irrational...partially erratic things – like convert a guest room into more fabric storage, even though you have lots of company and they would REALLY appreciate not having to spend the first hour of their visit pushing fabric off all of the furniture; like labeling boxes of fabric “MORE TAMPONS” so your husband never fully knows how much you actually have; like buying yardage from your favorite designer knowing full well that you love it waaaay too much to ever cut into it – thus perpetuating the cycle of having stacks and stack of too much fabric.
What makes a quilt block modern? I’ve been thinking about this question, and the best answer I can come up with is negative space. When I first learned how to quilt 15 years ago, the idea of using solid fabric wasn’t on my radar.
In The Beginning
I have now been quilting for exactly half of my life. I started at the impressionable age of 15 and am now...ahum...well, you can do the math 🙂 I wasn't exactly a "cool kid" back then. Let me paint a quick picture.
The conversation I'm going to have with my husband tonight...
Me: How was your day today, honey?
John: Super busy and kinda stressful. I had a conference call at 9AM, an 11AM dashboard deadline and another client call at 2. After that I figured out a complex algorithm to better display the statistical analysis of my market research.
Some of you may see curved quilt blocks and immediately equate them with advanced sewing skills. BUT before you count yourself out, take a look at my super quick suuuper easy How To Sew Curves YouTube tutorial. (Seriously, do it, then come back.
There’s no dancing around the issue, so I’m just going to come out and say it.
I’m a feminist.
A radical, equality-love’n, girl-power karate-kick’n feminist (I’m not totally sure karate has anything to do with feminism, but it sounded good in the moment).
For all of your scrap-busting needs, I bring you - 10 FREE scrap quilt patterns!
You don’t have to be a quilter for very long to start accruing scraps of fabric. A little snip here, a slice there, and pretty soon a pile forms...and
For a link to the FREE Retro Plaid quilt pattern, scroll to the bottom of this post. The SQ quilt pattern library includes other similar designs that come in lots of different sizes. The following patterns are not free, but if you need a pattern for a size other than throw, I encourage you to check them out!
