Fabric Friday: First Loves

You never forget your first love. The way your heart skipped a beat the first time you laid eyes on that beautiful creature, and you knew you'd never be the same. Other loves come and go, but the first, the original... Well, there's really nothing like it, is there?

So you can imagine my excitement when -- out of the blue -- mine popped up at my HOUSE this week!

It's been a rough few weeks here, end of term and all. Naturally, this called for a little retail therapy. The ever-obliging UPS man delivered this happy little stack to my door about a week ago:

Packed with quilty goodness

Swamped with work, I really didn't have time to look through them right away. So, I let Miss Em flip through to see if there were any in particular that caught her eye. My last quilt for her was the "Wicked" quilt, and I think she's feeling a tad neglected... Like those cobblers' kids, who have no shoes.

Anyhoo... She asked if she could fold over the page corners for the ones she liked.

(!?!)

Once my speaking voice slipped back to within audible threshold intensity, I suggested she use slips of paper instead. I passed her the empty Barnes & Noble box, complete with packing slips and glossy advertisements.

"Can I tear this, too?" she asked, purchase order in hand.

"Absolutely."

What Dad doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

About a half-hour later, she handed me these:

I only have to make quilts from the marked pages.  :)

Like mother, like daughter.

Somewhere between 1,000 pages of organic exams and 1,000 pages of project reports, I managed to squeeze in a minute to peruse these luscious pages. Emma was right: these books are jam-packed with eye candy, one quilt happier and more desirable than the next. As I moved from page to page, I slipped into a sort of bliss, the kind you feel when all of the planets are in alignment and your brain starts to simmer with ideas. You can imagine how jarring it was, then, when I turned to page 17 of Sunday Morning Quilts and found myself face-to-face with this:

Borrowed from Sunday Morning Quilts

The first. The original. One-half of Amanda Jean's (Crazy Mom Quilts) duo "Pete + Repeat," a set of twin-sized quilts she made for her boys' beds back in 2009, and the very first "modern quilts" to catch my eye. I remember studying those wonky blocks -- before I knew the word for it -- and thinking, "Those aren't actually straight, are they?" And, the fact that the fabrics didn't all match, well... Just about blew my tiny little mind! What got me more than anything, though, was the binding: Amy Butler's Lotus Full Moon Dot, in tangerine:

Love that binding:    http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2009/04/pete-repeat.html 

Love at first sight.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really in a place to do anything about it at the time.  Lotus had already flown off the shelves -- not that I had the means to purchase any. Despite many a Google search, I couldn't find a scrap of it anywhere. What I did find instead were the "web-logs" (ha) of modern quilters, with names like Oh, Fransson!,  Film in the Fridge and Red Pepper Quilts, all of whom had used the fabric in their own creations. And, just like that, I was hooked. A modern quilter was born.

Over the years, I have had this fabric in and out of my shopping cart more times than I can count. This week, after years of longing -- and, just in time for our STLMQG polka dot swap -- I finally took the plunge:

*Sigh*

    And, they lived happily ever after.