Off the Fabric Diet

For the most part, I’ve been on a fabric diet for a year and a half…what I mean is that I’ve really not bought any fabric in a quilt shop. Well maybe a half yard for binding or something but nothing much that didn’t have a real purpose.

Well…I went off the fabric diet. But I went off for good reason. My Courthouse Steps quilt top is finished.
How fun is this???

Who would ever guess that this quilt is just a scrap bucket clean out and not a planned beauty??

So often when working with greens there is such a wide range of them that it’s hard…here I threw them all in and didn’t worry about it.

I’m in love. I spent yesterday morning ironing it and getting it ready for the quilt machine because it was on my list to tackle in the quilt machine.

Last week when the childcare kiddos were here the little boy who is getting this quilt for Christmas came over to the kitchen island and saw some of the blocks. He commented on them and said something along the lines of “if you make me a quilt, I want a turtle quilt”. Hmm. “Well”, I told him, “the colors are remind me of an ocean turtle. Green like the turtle and blue like the ocean, don’t you think?” He said yes. Well…that set my brain in motion.

I could make this be a turtle quilt. All I needed was a backing fabric that had sea turtles. Even though I was willing to break my fabric diet, I still wanted it to be reasonably priced so I went to Quilted Twins online. I know they often have novelty prints or panels. I could easily buy a panel and border it with fabric I had here to make a backing.

After looking they had a couple more expensive fabrics..and a cheaper fabric. I weighed the pros and cons of each and ended up with this fabric.

The plan is that I’ll have a strip of that through the quilt backing with some green fabric across the top and blue along the bottom. I haven’t dug to see what I have yet but I know something it there. I think that will make a fun backing. I got 3/4 of a yard extra of the fabric with the plan to make a matching pillowcase. I’m so happy with the idea…I hope it turns out like I see envisioned.

Well..You know how it goes, as long as I was ordering, I might as well make the postage I’m paying worth it, right?? Well in the process of making the Crooked Courthouse Steps quilt, I used up all of the white based neutrals I had in the scrap bin. I ended up then moving to the 1 1/2″ bin and raided everything there and even went to the 2″ bin and raided…so I am out of scraps or strips to use. Any quilt I make from now on that needs white based neutral scraps is either going to need to come from the 2 1/2″ bin or from fabric. That means I need to stock up!! So I did.

I looked for anything that was white based and CHEAP. I wanted printed fabric like the ones you see here….

I think they make the quilt so fun.

Much of their fabric is $5.99 a yard and I snapped up what I could find that fit the criteria of being white based.

I like busy prints…this one below was cute.

Both of these are leaf themed.

I picked these five too. You can’t see it very well but the one that looks mostly white, actually has Disney’s dumbo the elephant on it. The Mickey Mouse comic fabric was cute too.

I did find a bundle of fabric that was something I would have bought but that was sold out. Typically if I’m at a fabric store I only buy quarter yard cuts but this is sold by the yard, and a yards worth was reasonably priced.

When I put these away I noticed that my white based stash is really low so I’m allowing a few more purchases so I can have a nice blend when it comes time to need this type of fabric again…in fact, something is on the back burner that does need it!! So I’ll stay on the lookout.

With the finish of that top, my scrap bucket is VERY low on greens and blues. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not overflowing because it it. Seriously, how did that quilt not make a dent in it??

Anyway…I’m off. I need to keep working if this quilt is going to be done by next Friday. That’s the goal.