Join the 2025 Cherish Club!

It's time to cut into your favourites.

I came to quilting through the big, beautiful florals by Anna Maria Horner and sweet childhood scenes by Heather Ross, but I rarely ever cut into them. I cut into the fabrics I bought on clearance, the fabric I didn't really like but was happy to use up, and the fabric that had been dumped on me once people learned I was a quilter. Part of me really loved the idea that a scrappy quilt could welcome any kind of fabric and the overall quilt would look beautiful, but part of me also didn't quite trust myself not to cut into my favourites and then regret it later. Back then, I made lots and lots of quilts I didn't really love, and I put it down to the fact that I was still learning about colour and contrast and using different shapes to bring out their best. And yet, for some reason, it felt like too high a risk to cut into my favourite fabrics. For some reason, I preferred to risk an ugly quilt than the regret of using something I loved and realising I should have done it differently.

My posture started to shift when I started my business selling paper pieces in 2016. I knew that if I wanted to inspire people to take up the slow art of EPP, I needed to make quilts worth the effort! I'd been holding onto a beautiful fat quarter bundle of Heather Ross' Tiger Lily, complete with it's sweet novelty prints of cats and kids climbing trees and ballerinas, for about a year, and I knew I couldn't give it my regular and favoured treatment of cutting it all up into a thousand diamonds and stitching them together at random. I gave myself the challenge of making a quilt for the fabric, and then actually cutting into it, rather than have the bundle sit on my shelf for the next 10 years.

I laid out my precious fabrics, brought in other prints and solids from my stash and then slowly and gingerly, started to cut into it and build a collection of blocks.

My experience of making Cherish Quilt changed quilting for me forever. I LOVED using fabric I loved. (Duh!) I felt pleased as punch to be trusting myself with these precious pieces. I was like my kids when they got to go to the grocery store on their own for the first time, shopping list and debit card entrusted safely in their care. I felt grown up.

But at the same time, the precious, museum artefact-like status of my fabric also shrunk as I cut into it. I learned that it was, in fact, only fabric! It was made to be used, to be cut up. I learned that it was ok if I made a wrong cut, or regretted the colours I put together. I could unpick and reuse the mistakes in a different part of the quilt, or if I couldn't, it would still be ok, and once the whole quilt was put together, I didn't really notice if that cat's head was cut off or those flowers weren't really centred.

I had been waiting for years to be good enough to cut into my favourite fabrics, but it took actually making a quilt from my favourites to learn that I could have cut into them all along and it would have been fine. Beautiful even!

Join the 2025 Cherish Club!

I would love you to join me over the last half of 2025, as we make a Cherish Quilt together and talk all things fabric! I'd love you to dig through your stash and pick out your favourites, or pull out that treasured bundle you surely can't enjoy all tightly folded and stored in a cupboard! I'll walk you through which fabric types suit which parts of the block, cutting fabrics like stripes or novelty prints intentionally, and how to pick fabrics for pleasing contrast. I'll also walk you through how I like to prepare my blocks for smooth and easy progress, and a reduced decision making burden. Want to join me?

The Schedule

Often quilt-alongs will take you through specific steps, week by week, with the promise of a finished quilt by the end of it. My EPP clubs are a little different. We'll be making our Cherish Quilts from July-November, but there's no set number of blocks you need to make per week or month (though you can if you like!). You're welcome to join at any time, and sew at a pace that suits you. And, if you already have a Cherish WIP, feel free to join us by giving it some attention! Here's the schedule of steps and inspiration and info I'll be sharing over the next several months:

June: Buy your Cherish EPP kit

• Compare block sizes

• get inspired by finished Cherish quilts from over the years

July: Fabric conversations while your paper pieces arrive

• Using your favourites, tricky prints, basics, bundles, and more

August: Starting your Cherish Quilt

• Decisions to make before you start

• Prepping for easy progress

• How to EPP video

After we've covered these topics, we'll move to a monthly check-in.

September 12: Cherish Blocks

• Your progress shared with the group

• Tuning in to what you love and don't love.

October 10: The Overall Quilt

• What does your quilt need?

• Making your half blocks and edge pieces

November 14: Quilting inspiration and finish!

This treasure trove of info and inspiration will be shared right here in my weekly newsletter, so if you’re getting this directly to your inbox, you don’t need to do a thing! Just grab your Cherish EPP kit from the shop, and start looking through your favourite fabrics!

I finished this quilt in 2017, complete with cats with missing heads and trimmed off edges, and I still love it! I love it so much more than if I’d kept the fabrics folded up in their safe, perfect bundle. Since then, I’ve made Cherish six more times, adjusted the edge design, made a small block option, and grown in fluency and confidence working with colour and print. It’s become one of my favourite quilts to make, and I can’t wait to share all I’ve learned with you!

This week only, I’m offering the Cherish EPP supplies, and all fabric bundles for 15% off! Click here to get started!

Happy Stitching,

Jodi. xx

PS. Today, Lisa and I updated the Cherish Pattern again to make it easier to read and follow, with new photos and clearer instructions. If you’ve bought the pattern before, you should have received an email with a free link to the updated version. (If you haven’t received it, email hello@talesofcloth.com and we’ll sort it out!)

PPS. Know someone who’d love to join us? Forward this newsletter to them, and they can sign up here!