Au Pair

Most, but not all of these fabrics are in the discard pile. Some of the ones I liked are here (like the yellows) because I needed something light and bright as contrast of the dark they were paired with.

None of the fabrics in the "discard" pile is really bad. Some of them were merely victims of "in the store it looked good, at home, not so much" or something else was just better. And some I've had so long my tastes have changed. Some I'm just tired of looking at. Some are here because I have so much, I know I won't use it all up any time soon.

Both of these were given to me because I know I'd never have bought either one of them.

However, these "fuglies" are only ugly in the eye of the beholder, and next to the right partner, ANY fabric can suddenly become beautiful. It's why I don't really have one favorite color. Any color can be made to shine and be the star of the show.

I'm also a big believer in how working with a very tight set of restrictions can really force you to get creative, and sometimes do your best work. That's what happened with my Early Autumn quilt. I thought I was making a "normal" quilt, but it turned out to be anything but.

I don't want the stash reorganization to get sidetracked, but I'm at the point with this new quilt that it won't take much to grab my attention and not let go. I love when that happens.

And I have an idea to really add some ZING to these blocks. I am eager to see if my idea pays off and looks as fun in real life as it does in my head. We shall see.

Now What?

Sorting out the fabric in my stash, I found a lot of stuff I don't particularly like. It's okay, but nothing really special. I know if I put it back in the stash, it'll stay there forever. Most of the stuff was smallish prints or blender-ish, although there are some busier prints.

WHAT could I do with them?

SURE, I could cut them up into chunks and make a scrappy quilt, but that would be boring to do and didn't hold any appeal. If I wanted to use up that fabric, I had to find an interesting way to do it.

HOW could I cut up these fabrics so I could sew them up into something cool?

And then I thought of the quilt I featured in my very first blog post, some ten plus years ago. It was made from scraps.  Sort of.

I cut and paired contrasting fabrics together, then sewed them together...

I cut these up into long triangles.

Here are several pieces I've already cut.

Here are some ideas on putting these together. You can make the stripes line up across blocks, or you can emphasize the contrast. Clearly I'm going to have some fun with this.

To Judy who wondered if I cut something into smaller pieces after fussy cutting something out of a chunk of fabric - oh hell no. If I can fold the fabric back up fairly reasonably, then I do.

To Rebecca who wanted to know how I am keeping on track, the answer is, in small doses. I can only fold so much stuff before I go stark raving mad, so I do some folding and rearranging and then I go do something else.  Now that I have decided what to do with the fabrics I am not in love with, I'll cut strips when I find that stuff, and move on. I am now extra motivated to get the fabric sorting done so I can work on the next quilt with these long triangles.

To the Selvage Fairy, I think I have more than one bird quilt in my future. The New Hampshire Quilt will be a quilt for me and represent anything and everything I like. Family members in it? Not so much. I don't have a table quilt with birds, so with the bird-like fabric I discover as I organize the fabric will probably turn into birds that go into a table quilt.