Cherish in Spring

A Cherish Club check-in!

My recent Cherish quilt has been a bit of a fun personal challenge. Made mostly from Lizzy House’s Love Letter, full of fabrics I love but in colours a little different to my usual scrappy, jewel tones. I wanted to see if I could make a quilt I loved that shows off these fabrics I loved. I’ve learned from experience this isn’t always possible. Sometimes you know that you can love a fabric but not use it. Liberty can be a bit like that for me. Or Tula Pink. I’ve learned to admire them and no longer buy them because they don’t fit into the palette of fabric paints I’ve built as my stash.

But these darling prints and colours, rich golds and happy reds, a lilac so pretty and hard to find, with both dusty and forest greens, peaches and teals. As you might have read here before, I matched them with other fabrics I had on bolts, but them up and bundled them for the shop. Different to my usual style, I’ve enjoyed them like a tourist enjoys new foods and architecture and unfamiliar trees. Sometimes the new foods disagree with you and the language barrier becomes tiresome and you long for home again. But sometimes, like with my spring-coloured Cherish, you have a successful adventure, one you’re so glad to have embarked on.

This week, I took a little break from my book stitching and dug out my Cherish top. It was all sewn up and just needed the half and edge blocks stitched together and added. I was so glad that in a recent studio tidy up, I’d planned all the blocks and cut the edge triangles. It made it so much easier just to slip right back into this quilt without a whole lot of decision making friction.

I stitched the half blocks and added them, stitched the last edge block or two that wasn’t yet constructed and counted them. I only had 8 instead of 12. That was strange - I was so sure I had prepared all of them before I packed the scraps away! Where were they?

I searched my studio of stray zip-lock bags with the remaining shapes. I searched other WIP boxes, piles of fabric, drawers, the big bag of leftover shapes.

There comes a time that I’m sure you’ve all experienced where you need to decide that despite being absolutely sure these lost blocks exist, despite knowing that as soon as you remake them, they’ll magically appear, taunting you and forcing you to decide what the heck to do with them now that the quilt top for which they were intended is finished, it’s now time to make more. This surrender took me two days. It’s the reason I don’t have a finished quilt to share today, but merely a quilt top.

But despite the delay in proceedings, I am so smitten with this quilt! I wasn’t always sure I was going to like it. And now that I’ve finished, I’m not sure why I ever doubted these happy colours. Maybe it was just that I started in winter, when colours like these feel too brash, too over-confident, and now that it’s Spring here in Australia, they fit right in.

‘Losing’ the extra edge blocks (which I still haven’t found, and therefore probably never existed - thank goodness I gave up when I did and stitched the rest!) gave me the chance to make sure my favourite colours made one last bow, and I love the way they border the quilt top, bringing out these favourites scattered throughout the rest of the top.

My next job is to iron and baste it, quilt and bind it, and then take it out into the wild for photos, maybe our local botanic gardens where these colours are right at home these days.

While I rustle up motivation for the home stretch, let’s enjoy some other beautiful Cherish blocks from around the internet!

These lovely Heather Ross blocks in a limited palette shared by Samantha W in the Substack chat are just stunning, don’t you think? They remind me of the Cherish quilt that started it all. Read that story here!

A finished quilt top! This one by gaitedgardens in the Substack chat just glows with vintagey floral goodness, doesn’t it?

A quilt top in the making! Carole McCarthy shared her progress in the Substack chat and we love seeing the cohesive vibe but with so much variety among the blocks.

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We have one final grand prize winner for the Cherish club! The winner gets a bundle of fat 16ths, DMC and Aurifil thread, a beautiful hand-painted zipper-pull, and some Clover clips PLUS a $150AUD (approx $100USD) voucher for the Tales of Cloth shop (just in time for the Black Friday sales)!

Congratulations to Mandy of @thedandypatch! We love your wintery block with the perfect amount of fussy cutting and whimsy! Email us at hello@talesofcloth.com with your address and we’ll send you your prize!

This quilt, with more red and maroon, less jewelly pinks, more spice, less sugar, feels like a photo taken in a foreign land rather than one in more familiar, homely places. But it’s a palette I could see myself visiting again in the future. It’s been a joy to work with for a season, especially when that season is Spring!

Wishing you happy colours and happy weather,

Jodi. xx

PS. If you want to read more about my process for this quilt, I’ve written about it here!

PPS. There’s only 9 of these Sunday Drive fabric bundles left in the shop! Grab yours here!