Material Obsession

On our little holiday I purchased "Material Obsession" by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke. This morning after Pat left for school I wandered over with Softie to Little Nest a neighbourhood cafe to have breakfast, enjoy the sun and read this book about modern quilts with traditional roots.

Breakfast included poached eggs with shaved parmesan, baguette, green beans with lemon anchovy vinaigrette and a bread pudding muffin with chocolate, pistachio and fresh cherry. Heaven - need to do a post on Little Nest another day.

Having spent a fair bit of time quilting and thinking about quilting it was delightful to read this inspiring book. The authors give really good advice about getting into quilt making and their patterns are wonderful.

What touched me the most was the underlying encouragement to do what you felt like doing and that "quilting does not have to be about boundaries" and to have a great time while doing it.

Kaffe Fassett's forward to the book recognizes that quilting can be a large canvass for expressing the emotions of our lives and he goes on to say "in order for many of us to do this on a level that communicates with others, we need a great deal of encouragement and confidence building. So true.

I have been so fortunate to have stumbled on Joy's Hope blog that led me to Dana's Old Red Barn Quilt Along, then creating the strawberry quilt as part Dana's Rail Fence , then working on Amy Parker's Zig Zag quilt and now getting ready, gearing up to do John Cary's Wonky Blocks.

The Old Red Barn Quilt Along is the epitome of the best of the quilting community that provides that needed encouragement and confidence building. I have "met" lovely people around the world who share an interest in quilting through this group. The personalities are so different but the support and encouragement is universal.

I will figure out how to do the links to Joy's Hope and the ORBQA and post them here so you can see what I mean.

It is amazing.