This all started the way most of my problems do: I saw something beautiful and said, “Oh, I could totally make something with that,” with the blind confidence of someone who once watched a YouTube tutorial at 2am and now thinks she’s emotionally ready for another quilt.
The fabric was Counter by e bond for FreeSpirit Fabrics.
The concept? Exploring the negative space inside letterforms.
The reality? Me staring into the void wondering if I, too, was just a lowercase e waiting to be emotionally filled with thread and regret.
At first, I just admired the prints like a normal person. “Look at the bold shapes! Look at the color stories! It’s inspired by letterpress printing at a historical museum—how wholesome!” Fast forward 48 hours and I was hunched over my cutting table like Gollum with a rotary cutter, whispering “my precious” as I trimmed another round of half square triangles and disassociated.
I added blenders.
I added more blenders.
I lost control of my life somewhere between yellow 70s mustard and “taupe-but-make-it-sad.”
Cutting everything up felt amazing. I was on fire.
Sewing everything back together? That’s when things got… complicated.
If you’ve ever questioned your worth, your sanity, and whether you truly needed to square up 128 HSTs while rewatching Succession, then congratulations — you’ve also been possessed by The Project That Would Not End™. I spent three full evenings piecing while mentally spiral-noting my funeral playlist and wondering if this is how Taylor Swift feels trying to sequence an album: just vibes, pain, and an unreasonable number of triangles.
Anyway. I finished it.
It’s done.
It’s a quilt now.
And it SLAPS.
It's got movement. It’s got depth. It’s got the moody energy of a coffee shop that only plays Radiohead on vinyl. It's the kind of quilt that would wear thick black glasses, quote James Baldwin, and casually ruin your life in the best way.
If this quilt were a person, it would be that impossibly cool art professor who chain-smokes, reads five books at once, and says things like, “form is nothing without fracture.” And you’d believe her.
So if you're thinking of making something with Counter, do it.
Just know: it’s not a project.
It’s a transformation.
A very stylish, slightly unhinged transformation.
And you might never be the same again.
(But honestly? You’ll look incredible on the other side.)