Interchangeable Blocks

As you may know, I work as a music teacher at an elementary school (my DREAM job!) And my favorite thing to do with my students is to improvise music!

Here’s why:

1. Aside from paramaters I set with regard to structure, phrasing and tonality, the students don’t have a script or model that they are trying to emulate. So, there isn’t really a right and wrong. Everyone is successful.
2. Students make up music which is inherently their own, and that, to me, is the most authentic way to get them to express themselves.
3. Students are at the center of their music-making. I am actually the one to learn the most from the ideas they create, which I love because despite my education experiences and background, my ideas for what music should sound like shouldn’t really dictate how my students create their music.

Which brings me to quilting…

As a pattern writer, I am in search of something similar for quilters. It feels a little constricting to think that I’m writing directions on how to make a specific quilt for people follow, and it reminds me of looking at manuals to assemble furniture.

So, I wonder if I can step back in designing quilts by changing the parameters and giving quilters more options in the design of the quilts they make.

I want to do this by designing blocks and writing the fabric requirements, cutting and piecing instructions that allow people to make 1, 4, 5, 9, and 25 iterations of a single block.

I want to share these block patterns in a membership site where I can share a new monthly design that could be paired with any of the other blocks. The beginning of the membership would start with 3 interchangeable blocks, which equals – I don’t even know how many quilt layout options.

Anyway, is this something that you’d be interested in?!

I’ll keep you in the loop =)