So I’ve booted the kids out of the playroom with windows and moved my sewing room up from the basement (without windows). This has been most definitely an improvement. In the process, I have also been working through my stash, folding it using the comic board technique, and generally just reminding myself what I have. Japanese prints (collectibles! vintage!), lots of batiks I found from an estate sale, fat quartes from when I was just starting out to quilt, “modern” fabrics ( a bit more on this weighty topic below), kiddy fabrics… they’re all getting a look. And the folding continues at a glacial pace because, well, folding is boring when done all at once.
Slow and steady will win the race and make you want to bang your head on the cutting board
As I was going through things, though, I found what was my first “big” fabric purchase. A few blocks left over from a triple Irish chain and a couple of yards of a backing fabric that wasn’t big enough for what I wanted to do. I have held on to it because I still love it. It’s from April Cornell’s “Poetry” line for Moda, and I believe it’s from 2005, a year before Denyse Schmidt launched her first line, and perhaps even before Amy Butler launched hers.
These are some seriously large flowers, and are what drew my eye in the first place since they were so very different.
I remember thinking at the time that this collection was so very different from the quilting fabrics I had seen so far, and at that moment I was hooked on what would eventually come to be called “modern quilting”, usually defined by lots of bright colors and large expanses of negative space in neutrals like white and grey. It makes me laugh sometimes to read about modern quilting with all of the rules regarding exactly what it is. Quliting has always been and will always be about making what you like with the fabrics you love–a true statement for most craftspeople who create for themselves. I *am* super happy that it has caught on the way it has in the last 8 years or so, since it means I am not often disappointed when I go fabric shopping, which wasn’t always the case.
Hmm. I may have to rummage around and see if I can’t find the rest of this triple irish chain and maybe finish it up, after all…
I still think this is the precursor of the modern stuff we see now. Look at those colors! Paisleys! dots!
Spark a conversation!