#NGAQB – April

“Mr. Quilt Dad, you can stop tapping your foot at me. Yes, I know you want your Anna Maria Horner feathers, but you’ll get them when you get them. Maybe next time choose Kona White.”

Do you know how hard it is to find Snow in Australia? On top of that do you know how expensive it is? I might as well go to Threadbo. Since I couldn’t find any here in the land down under, I asked April’s #NGAQB King, John Q. Adams, to send me the good stuff from overseas. That’s why I’m late, we’ll blame it on, um, Customs. As soon as it arrived, I chopped it into shapes, and sewed all night. Three nights actually! I’m still sewing! Sew sew sew! I sewed so much I wound up with twice as many feathers as I needed!!!  

While I go find a Xanax, or three, here’s what John Q. Adams (aka Quilt Dad) had to say about himself:  

“I am a father of three, originally from Brooklyn NYC but now living in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. I live with my 9 year-old twin girls, my 8 year-old son, and a crazy German Shorthaired Pointer named Bristol. Though I often wish it could be, quilting and pattern-writing is not my full-time job; by day, I lead branding and brand marketing efforts for a global software company. I am a completely self-taught quilter (thanks, blogs and internet!) and have been sewing for about 7 years now. I earned my undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of North Carolina and, when I’m not sewing, enjoy cheering for the UNC Tar Heels.  

I was originally inspired by the blossoming worlds both of craft blogging and modern fabrics back in 2004. I was living in Charlotte NC at the time and began mixing and matching fabrics and buying fat quarters in my local quilt shop even before I knew how to sew a stitch. I was really drawn to the creative process of mixing and matching colors and prints. That was when Amy Butler’s Lotus line had just come out, and the options for bright modern fabrics was growing like crazy. Before long, I decided I was going to make a quilt and read free tutorials online until I felt comfortable with the basics.

I started my blog, QuiltDad.com, in 2008 on a whim, mainly to be eligible to join a swap at the time but ultimately to share my love of patchwork with others.

Since then, I’ve remained very active in online quilting communities through swaps, virtual quilting bees, and guilds. Today, I try to apply my own quilting aesthetic to designing original quilt patterns for both fabric designers and companies and frequently contribute to creative blogs, books, and other collaborative endeavors. I’ve contributed to several collaborative quilt books, have two book titles of my own (Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays and the soon to be released Beyond Neutral: Quilts Inspiredby Nature’s Elements) and was a co-founder of the popular e-magazine and book series for modern quilters, Fat Quarterly.