I am part of a group that meets to exchange Charm squares once a month at my LQS. There are fourteen of us in the group and we bring that many six-inch squares of two different fabrics; in turn, we each come home from the meeting with 28-6" Charms! This month the selected Charm color was GREEN: aren't they pretty? The "rules" for a Charm Quilt are really quite simple: the quilt should be of a one-patch design with no fabric repeats. Many Charm Quilts depend on the interplay of light and dark to illustrate the chosen pattern, it's perfectly OK to turn the Charm to the wrong side to create more lights... but still, no fabric should repeat! I tend to be a quilt-rule breaker and love to read stories of mothers who, a century ago, purposely repeated a charm just so that the children would have fun, and spend hours, searching for that one pair of identical twin prints! (Go ahead and summon the quilt police now, I'm completely sure I'd like to do that!) I have found some down-loadable one patch designs with printable templates from Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, there are lots of intriguing options. We will continue to meet through the year, giving our Charm collections plenty of time to grow! (I find the collecting every bit as much fun as eventually making the quilt!) Our Charm organizer does a great job of instructing, yesterday she did a mini-lesson on value before she invited participants to come up for show and tell. Coincidentally, there happened to be two different Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts; both stunning examples of one-patch designs, it was a Spring-garden kind of day!
Somedays life is one, long smorgasbord...Life is Good!
3 comments:
Hi. Just visiting. What fun to collect charms. Wish I could join your group.
It would be challenging to make a charm quilt but by collecting them the way you've described sounds terrific. It sounds so fun to meet & swap. Instead of always having your own taste, you would have a more eclectic collection, I suppose, the purpose of the swap, of course. Be sure to let us know what you make with them when the time comes.
I love working with hesegons and have made two Grandmother's flowergardens. They are great carry around projects.
Those charms look wonderful. I think fatquarters.com had some free patterns using charms.
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