Retro Tetro was the first quilt pattern that I ever published. But before that, an earlier version of it was also the first quilt that I ever designed and made. (It’s also my oldest UFO, but let’s ignore that for now!)

My goal was to make a baby blanket that looked like a Tetris game that was going well. All results when I searched for images of “Tetris blanket” showed a major lack of understanding of how the game was played. In fact, they looked like someone was deliberately trying to play the worst game of Tetris possible, making it impossible to get any full rows.

As a non-quilter, I started the design process in PowerPoint. It was my go-to program for drawing geometric shapes, and I knew my way around it very well.