Saturday, January 16, 2010

In Which Using Up Scraps Leads to Buying More Fabric

I always love Bonnie's color combinations so much that I want to make my Bonnie-quilts exactly like hers.


Carolina Crossroads: red, white, and blue? Perfect! (Besides, I have so many of them.) Hand me that rotary cutter.


Double Delight: indigo, chocolate, double pink, and cheddar? Bonnie, you are channeling my inner color sense! (Or maybe I'm channeling yours.) Hand me that rotary cutter.


Carolina Christmas: red, green, and gold? I love Christmas colors. And I'll bust so much stash making this quilt because I have so much of these colors. Except the gold, of course. I'll have to buy some gold. (I told you about my quest for gold in a previous post.)


So I bought and preshrunk my gold. And then I began to think, "I'm not being very creative. I always use the exact same colors Bonnie does." I commanded my dormant individuality to arise and assert itself.


"Purple!" I said. "I have lots of purple. And I like purple and green together. They are complementary colors (just like red and green), and they look good with gold. And I will call my quilt, 'California Advent' since purple is the liturgical color for the weeks proceeding Christmas."


So I pulled my neutrals from my stash. Hmmmm. Not as many as I thought. Making scrap quilts has really put a dent in them. So I bought more neutrals. Anyway, you can never have too many of those. And when Bonnie posted an update on the amount of background fabric we'd need, I felt vindicated. My shopping conscience was bathed in a glow of justification.


I had plenty of greens, so that was fine. But what happened to all my purples? Yikes! Didn't I have a huge number of those? Oh, yeah. I like purple. Funny how that leads to using them up. Maybe I should buy more. But that's adding to the stash, not using it up. More indecision. Should I go back to red?


At this rate I'll never get my quilt done. There's only one thing to do. Pick up that rotary cutter and start slicing the golds and neutrals for step one. Like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll postpone thinking about the rest of my quilt for another day.


I feel a little giddy, but scrappy quilters have to get used to living on the edge.


Update: As you can see from the picture at the top of this post, I ended up buying more purple. No wonder stashes never get any smaller.


2 comments:

Andee said...

I just finished Carolina Christmas in Purple and green..check out my blog if you want to see how it came out...I used orange for the other color...can't wait to see how yours comes to life! Oh and next up for me is Carolina Crossroads!

Catholic Bibliophagist said...

I had a look at your quilt top and like the use of orange. Though at first your photos weren't showing up. There was just this weird place holder saying that your photos had been removed or replaced. This morning I looked at your blog again -- same thing! But when I hit the reload button, they appeared.