As the Worlds Collide...

So there I was minding my own business and the BAM, the need to shop for quilt fabric hit out of nowhere!

Okay – a slight exaggeration but that’s how it felt.  I’ve been fairly, mostly, and sometimes entirely of the ‘Shop the Stash’ mindset.   My stash is what I would consider medium.  Over the past two years, I have sorted through, carefully and then ruthlessly culling out fabrics that I no longer am enamored of or will never get around to using – flannels, homespun, traditional prints, conventional blenders, a few panels, etc.  All of them were passed on to other quilters who will love & use them up. 

Then three things collided in my world.  The 2014 Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt colors were released, I was heading to Michigan for a weekend (only a hop, skip & jump from Shipshewana) and time to stock up for winter shopping.  

That set up the perfect reason / opportunity to head to Shipshewana to do some lying in of provisions for winter.  I like to hit the bulk food store for spices, tea, jam, etc.  What’s a quilter to do when traveling to quilt fabric Mecca with color cards and fabric swatches from the stash?  I would just look to just see, if perchance, there are a few half-yard cuts or fat quarters wanting to come home with me…

I knew, at a minimum that I need to buy the black batik – nothing in the stash – and check the neutrals, as I only wanted to use 1 or 2 at the most in the new mystery quilt and I sure didn’t have that yardage at home. 

My pink collection at home is a little light after last year’s mystery quilt, when I changed the yellow to pink, and I wanted hotter, deeper pinks, edging into violet.  I found some awesome half-yard cuts.

I decided to lighten the green from grass to lime, well, actually Robert Kaufman AMD-7000 KIWI.  

 And since I was lightening the green, I deepened the turquoise.

I found the exact black batiks I wanted!!  I had cruised the internet last week, checking out some batiks for ideas and found this one – and Lolly’s had it! YAY!

The neutral was an issue – it couldn’t be too cold, or dark, or too grey, definitely not tan-ish or yellow-y.  It had to be perfect!  I found half-yard cuts of two prints in oyster - just warm enough and almost shimmery against the black and deep tones.

That brings me to yellow.  Since I had altered the other colors, a golden yellow wouldn’t stand up to them.  I need lemon – bright clear and not too variegated. Yellow batiks are not a dime a dozen.  It took three quilt shops to find just the right one. Lighter than I thought it might be, but the clearest lemon I could find.

As you can see, I totally fell off the fabric shopping wagon.  Sometimes, you just have to splurge a little and what better to spend it on than fabric.

Have a great weekend -  I need to go wash some fabric...