Second Finish of 2019

Here is my second finish of 2019, and I've got another quilt quilted and waiting for binding.

I'm actually taking a couple days off from FMQ, and I'm pushing through with all of those Flying Geese units. I have another plastic shoe box half full with units, and I've got one wing sewn on most of the rest. It's an unscheduled detour, but I really just wanted those finished for some reason. It's not even a deadline quilt. 

I haven't touched the weighted blankets nor the quilt on the design wall. The quilt on the design wall has been claimed now though. I had DD#1 look at it in person, because it never photographs well. She likes it much better in person, and so she's claimed it for her youngest (which I was hoping would happen). I try to make all the grandkids a quilt for their big beds by their second birthdays. Miss E will be one in May, so I've got plenty of time to finish it, but I won't have to start a whole new quilt for her. Using a UFO for what would be a deadline quilt is a  win/win situation. I finish a UFO, they get a quilt on time.

I've been chuckling over this.

See the empty spots of my fabric shelves? That basting spree created several spots like this on my shelves. I'm perfectly OK with using my fabric, but what I find funny, is it takes making backings to see yardage disappear. Since I like my quilts to use as many fabrics as possible, my scrap user system, fat quarters and less than one yard pieces turn over quickly. Yardage really only goes quickly if I'm using it for background, borders or backing. 

When I first started quilting, I bought lots of yardage. I kept thinking I'd need large pieces to make a quilt. I didn't buy fat quarters at all, thinking they were too small to be useful. Now that I've been avidly quilting over ten years I think exactly the opposite. I still buy yardage of solids, blenders, and tone on tones, but unless I absolutely love a print (which rarely happens) I never buy yardage of a print without a specific project in mind. If I want some fun new prints to play with, fat quarters work just fine. 

In some of my online groups I hear women complain of exactly the opposite problem. They use up all their yardage, and the fat quarters they bought sit neglected in a corner. I really believe they key is knowing what kind of quilts you want to make. Some women really hate scrap quilts, but they are my favorite. I've made some quilts with just a few fabrics, and it bored me to tears. If a quilt is too "matchy-matchy", it looks like something you could get at a department store to me. 

That said, I really love looking at quilts made from the same patterns I've made scrappy, but someone else has made with only a few fabrics. I don't want to make those quilts, but I do like looking at them. That's why when I do a mystery quilt, I always use a different color scheme. I like looking at the same pattern done multiple ways. It's amazing to me how different the same pattern looks with different fabric choices. I've used several patterns multiple times, and a couple times people have insisted the quilts are not the same pattern, even when the quilts are side-by-side. Fabric and color choices completely change the feel of a quilt. 

How many of you would have a completely different stash if you knew when you started what you know now? To be fair, a lot of my stash was inherited, and I'll buy almost any cotton fabric if it's dirt cheap at a thrift store, so that wouldn't change. I would have less yardage overall, and likely a larger collection of fat quarters. No worries though, I go through lots of fabric, and eventually a lot of it will be used.