Shopping the stash

Saturday night, after my last post, I decided to go ahead and start on a small quilt. So I went shopping... in my stash! I think I spent two or three hours auditioning potential fabric combos before making a decision. And that's not even including the time I spent trying to find a pattern to use. :P

Shopping the stash is really kind of a milestone for me. I do use my stash, but typically I pick one fabric and then take it to the fabric store and find additional fabric to coordinate with it. Oftentimes, the end result of this is that the stash actually increases rather than diminishes. Trying to pull all of the fabrics for a quilt in its entirety from my stash is no easy task. The main challenge is that my stash consists of lots of cool prints, and not very many "helper" prints (you know, like those tone-on-tones, Moda marble-types, or simple, small scale prints that could compliment a variety of different big/bold/conversational prints). The lesser challenge is that, though (mostly) organized by color, my stash is kind of a mess. This means I have to pull out an entire stack and look through it all, because who knows what cute little fat quarter might be buried between the giant 2 yard cuts?

However, I met the challenge and found 6 fat quarters (which happen to be coordinates from the same collection), a coordinate, and a border fabric. I even think I've got the perfect fabric for the backing (though I haven't measured to see if I have enough... but, I can always piece it if need be). Woot!

At this point, all of the blocks are pieced and I have begun to put the top together. I'm using a pattern from M'Liss Rae Hawley's book, Fat Quarter Quilts. It's an Irish chain design she calls "Road to Ireland." It makes me think of my friend Mikki because it's the same pattern she used to make her very first quilt. :) So far, it is very girly—very different from my usual style. Makes putting it together even more fun!