Hope Valley

I can honestly remember the very moment the idea of quilting took root in my crafty head. I was shopping for—of all things—stationery and came across Denyse Schmidt’s What a Bunch of Squares notecards. I loved the graphic look of the collection, and it took me a minute to realize that the pictures were of quilts.

A mini Denyse Schmidt obsession followed. I became the proud owner of her first book, Denyse Schmidt Quilts: 30 Colorful Quilt and Patchwork Projects. I purchased yardage of Flea Market Fancy (original run). I purchased more yardage of Flea Market Fancy (legacy run). I even had a near run-in with Denyse herself at a Crate & Barrel. (I was gawking over a new line of quilts she had designed for the store. A sales associate observed my gawking, approached me, and said, “Oh, honey. You just missed her. She was here 15 minutes ago.” My near brush with quilting greatness!)

It’s worth noting that through all of this, I was not quilting. At all. Sure, I was sewing, but I was strictly a bags-and-pillows-and-curtains girl. It wasn’t until 2013 that I decided it was time to make a decision: Was I the collector of quilting books, or was I a quilter?!

Now, for quilt #7, I finally focus on my love of Denyse’s design esthetic, her singular talent for toeing the line between the old and new. Doing so required making a serious dent in my fat quarter collection from Hope Valley, and here is the result.

I ran out of Hope Valley while piecing the top, but I managed to get my grubby, fabric-loving hands on some yardage of the Wall Flower print and Four Square, both in the fiesta colorway, for the back and binding. (Thank heavens for smaller online fabric retailers with old stock!)

When I first started quilting, friends advised me that my quilts would feel like my children and that it would be hard to part with them. That hasn’t been true for me until this quilt. I love, love, love it—it’s all mine. I curl up with it every morning when I have some quiet time before my boys wake up.