A Red and White Quilt

Last year, while staying at my parents' place, I just couldn't get comfortable in their spare bed. It was too hot for the heavy doona, and too cold with just the sheets. The next morning, groggy and caffeine deprived (my parents don't drink coffee), I told my mum she needed a quilt on the bed.
"Can you make me one?" She asked, "And can we keep with the red and white theme in the room?"
Like a bolt of lighting, almost as good as coffee, ideas started crowding my mind. I started a Pinterest board so that I could be sure we were heading in the same direction. Mum liked the sampler quilts. I'd always wanted to make a sampler quilt. Mum turns 60 this year.
Yes. This was going to be fun! I bought a grid book.

I thumbed through the pages of my Farmer's Wife book. I'd always loved the quilts made from that book, but I'd never made the jump, held back by those darned templates. I'm just not the kind of girl to start something big and long if the first step is arguing with my printer. It really kills the mood. And 6" squares? I just wasn't sure I could commit to a queen size quilt of 6" squares. I thought about making them 8 inches, but that makes the 9 patch blocks tricky, and 9 inches makes the 4 patch blocks interesting. They would have to be 12 inches. Seven down and seven across. 49 of my favourite traditional blocks that could be made with only two colours, or adjusted to work. And, most importantly, cut with a rotary cutter. Yes!

I toyed with the idea of making it a pattern, but what I really wanted was a reference, here on the blog, that could be turned to for inspiration down the track, not locked in a pdf, on a computer, to be made when we get around to it. So I've decided to write a tutorial for each block, one a week, which will take us till the end of the year. Won't you join me?

While I've been making the blocks, I've been reading about their history, many over 100 years old. Even though most are connected to a place I don't call home, I've already connected to their stories. Women preparing to pack up their homes to make a better life for their families, making special gifts for friends or newlyweds, celebrating a birth, or even just drawing inspiration from everyday life. As a woman striving to live simply and meaningfully, I often experience self doubt about the place of quilting in my life. This year I want to dive into the long history of quilt making, and celebrate this craft as an important and worthwhile act of creative expression. So I'll be sharing what I can find about the blocks and telling my own stories along the way.

I've named the quilt Red Sky at Night. I'll be giving it its own tab on my page, and adding the tutorials there in a gallery as I go. If you want to make along side me, feel free to pick just one a month, or your favourites, if you want to make something smaller. And use the hashtag #redskyatnightQAL on Instagram to share your work there.

Ooh! I feel a little tingly! A bit like I did when I committed to a whole year without fabric shopping. I usually shy away from year-long goals, but when I have embraced them, the effort and the learning has been well worth it. I look forward to sharing it with you here! Starting Monday!

Joining in with Wip Wednesday