We caught up with Mr. G’s parents last Sunday to celebrate their 34th wedding anniversary. Mr. G needed to fix his mom’s computer (this is true pretty much every time we visit them), so he and his father headed upstairs for some tinkering and man chat. But Alice and I made straight for the basement where she’s got her quilting supplies and sewing station. Turns out visiting friends who sew is just like visiting friends who knit: the best fun is to root through the stash together. It’s much the way we used to play as children, don’t you think? Pull out all the available playthings, maybe even mix together your collections and do a little swapping, because everything old is new again under the friendly eye of a kindred spirit? Anyway, Alice sent me home with her extra cutting mat and three Kaffe Fassett quilting books on loan from her personal library.

Rewind to Saturday. Mr. G was at a Ruby on Rails conference (if that doesn’t mean anything to you, join the club where we just try to picture a massive geek-fest with lots of men and just a dash of women pushing their glasses up their noses and talking gobbledygook that you and I wouldn’t understand anyway). I was feeling a little mopey that I’d hardly had a glimpse of my husband in a week and that he was opting to stay out until 3am playing geek-fest games like Werewolf (which turns out to be exactly the same as Mafia, a favorite pastime among my middle schoolers) instead of coming home to bed. I decided it would lift my spirits to drive down to Mill End and frolic in their massive fabric selection with an eye to collecting some tidbits for a new quilt idea I’d had. But when I stood before the big wall of fat quarters, I found another force was guiding my eyes and my grabby fingers. Instead of industrial blues, greys, dirty whites, russets, and maroons, I was snatching up patterned greens and deep floral reds and buttery creams and Japanese botanicals. And once I had them all out together, I couldn’t put them back. I fell for a cream-ochre-and-green calico that happened to coordinate perfectly as a backing, and I had the makings of a quilt I hadn’t even envisioned yet.

So it must have been fate, because when I opened Kaffe Fassett’s Museum Quilts (all inspired by pieces in the Victoria & Albert Museum, probably my favorite place I’ve never been) the next evening, I lit immediately on the daftly-but-winsomely named Leafy Snowball quilt. And there was my project.

Turns out Kaffe is my man for the times when I just can’t resist the prints. My taste is more temperate than his sultry hothouse love of overblown, saturated florals and geometrics. But whenever a quilt recipe suggests a palette of solids enlivened with a few quiet prints and I can’t keep my hands off the wilder calicoes and toiles de Jouy, I know Kaffe will beckon. He’s beckoning already, because I’ve also fallen for these (links where I could find examples on Flickr, but you should really just go to the library and page through these sumptuous books):

From Museum Quilts:

Bricks Patchworks
Clamshell Quilt (or more realistically, the Square Clamshell Quilt)
Jockey’s Cap Baby Quilt

From Passionate Patchwork:

Squares Window Blind
Shirt-stripe Boxes (probably my favorite of all – and here’s Lauren’s beautiful version)
Baby’s Corrugated Quilt

But before I get too far ahead of myself, there’s my simple Lap Quilt to finish. I’ve done half my in-the-ditch stitching, so the quilting itself will soon be finished, but the binding I’ll do at least partially by hand, so it will be a little longer before I can claim victory. I’m thinking this quilt will be for the new baby next door, but she’s not arriving until the fall. This gives me time to make something for her big sister, too, which I think is important: when you’re not yet three, it’s hard to understand why the baby gets all the presents and attention. Plus it’s an excuse to keep on sewing!