Blue quilts!!! It is surely a quilting rite of passage to make a blue and white quilt, or at least a blue and yellow quilt. I must admit, though that I’ve never, ever made one, not even a UFO. Sure, my Quilt of Dreams quilts (see March 2006 archive) have cheery blue skies, but neither is what I’d consider a blue quilt. Occasionally my inner critic accuses me of not being a genuine quilter; after all, don’t they all have scores of blue quilts in their cupboards, and stacks of blue tops just waiting to be quilted?

Fabric manufacturers produce tons of the most enticing cottons in endless shades of blue, my stash attests to that. It is easy to buy blue fabric—blue seems to be the most plentiful shade in the stores. Maybe someday I’ll put them all together in a blue charm quilt.

The blue quilt I’d like most to make however, would be real indigo. Here are two indigo samples I scanned from garments I bought in Dali, China (top right: tie dye, left: batik). I taught English-as-a-second-language in China from 1992-94 and Dali was one of my favorite places I visited. The Bai women there had cottage industries, both dying the fabric and stitching it together into many different articles for sale to tourists. If only I’d been a quilter then I would have certainly come home with bolts and bolts of indigo (and trust me this indigo is the real thing—it took oodles and oodles of washings before you could wear these things and not become dyed indigo yourself). If you ever travel to China, don’t miss Dali. Besides the great shopping, the people are friendly and charming and there are amazing historical and scenic sites to visit.

happy quilting!