Tuesday, January 08, 2008

New year and busting through the stash

I guess the start of a new year makes every quilter retrospective. What did I accomplish? What didn't I finish? What new things did I start? This year, my thoughts are revolving around my stash. I considered pulling everything off the shelves and out of the drawers, refolding very neatly and reorganizing according to color and the size of the piece. But then I remembered all the UFOs and swap blocks I have sitting around and I feel irresponsible fondling fabric when I could be putting my energies to better use.

So my focus for the beginning of this year is to start working my way through all the fabric I have sitting here. I seem to go through cycles when I buy fabric. I go through a stock up on the basics phase, then I go through a buy huge pieces just because they're on sale phase, then I go through a buy fat quarters phase, etc. The fabrics that seem to be assaulting my sensibilities right now are the ones I bought on sale. I never fully fell in love with them so there's no reason to have 5 yards of black red and green floral hanging around anymore.
So I have decided to start using these unloved fabrics up in one way or another. I go to retreat in May and i will be taking whats left of the unloved fabrics with me for the 'dumping ground' and whatever is left will be donated to Peggy, the Project Linus coordinator for northern Indiana. I'm sure she'll be able to put it all to good use.

This is 2006 Rowrobin from Mailblocks. I was hoping for a Delftware looking quilt of all blues and whites only. However when it was returned to me there were other colors, pink included. It sat in my drawer for over a year while I pouted about the addition of other colors despite my specific instructions. Last week I pulled it out and decided I would just embrace the pink and used one of my unloved blue and pink florals to border it (rather difficult to see the pink in the blue border fabric) and do a small inner border of a pink that I have had lying around. Now I am working on a back made of swapped blocks and other blue and pink unloved ones to finish it up.
2006 Baglady done for me by Liz at Beyondbeginners
Liz did a great job working outside of her comfort zone regarding fabrics on this one. Its been sitting here for a while. I've been trying to figure out a quilting design to do it justice. (finally decided on a geometrical stippling of straight vertical and horizontal lines, sorry don't have a close up)
To back it, I pulled out some unloved, a yellow brick looking fabric and a pale green floral. Its hard to see the whole thing, there are four yellow squares framed in the pale green.


1 comment:

Debi said...

Your blue/white row quilt is beautiful. I really love row quilts and have hosted several round robin row by rows.

About Me

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Bargersville, Indiana, United States
I'm a 45 year old wife and mother. Quilting is my haven from the real world.