You may have noticed the three icons that have popped up in the sidebar. The first one is the My Precious Quilt-Along, which challenges you to use some of that fabric you just can’t get yourself to use — something old, or rare, or out of print, or just something you’ve been hoarding instead of using. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and I’ve loved poking through the images to see what fabrics people have been hoarding.
It’s hard to call my behavior true hoarding when I’ve only been quilting for a little over a month, but there are fabrics in my little stash that I look at and take out and pet and look at, and then put away carefully because WHAT IF I MESS THEM UP!? I had thought that knitting and spinning had cured me of my desire to keep the pretty things instead of using them, because I’m pretty good about knitting with or spinning up that really pretty yarn or fiber. But it turns out that’s really not the case at all when it comes to fabric: I get all grabby and want to just leave them on the shelf, because they’re pretty there, and clearly I’m not nearly a good enough quilter yet to merit using these fabrics.
The ones I’m most inclined to put back on the shelves just in case are from the 1001 Peeps collection, by Lizzy House. It’s not super-old (it seems to have come out in early 2011), but some of the prints are getting harder to find, so I hope it qualifies for the QAL.
I used a tiny bit of it for some Simple Math blocks, but for the My Precious QAL, I’m challenging myself to use more than one of the prints, in more than just a teeny strip. In other words, get that precious fabric off the shelf, and into a quilt. It was like pulling teeth, to get myself to actually pull even just a few of the prints off the shelf and into the queue for the Block of the Month quilt. I’ve ended up echoing the colors of the Blocks of the Month QAL over at In Color Order.
The only one here that I’m worried about messing up is the Illuminate.
Here I’ve got two from the 1001 Peeps collection: Peeps and towers, both of which I’m very fond of. I’m hoping I can sort of fussy-cut a little bit to get people in the triangles.
Here, again, is the Illuminate print, which I thought was too pale for the oranges. We’ll see how it works out in practice.
I’m going to swap out the orange print with crosses or the one with keys for the Scheherazade print in orange, because it’ll provide more of a contrast with the white half-triangles. It only took me sleeping on it for a night to decide that, yes, I could use that one, really. Apparently I really do want to keep some of these fabrics on the shelf.
And then I’ll have one of the prints I’m all grabby-hands about in each color group.
The third button, the Retro Flower QAL, is more of an aspirational project — once I work myself up to the idea of quilting curves, I’ll get going on it. For now, it sits in the sidebar to remind me that there are always new things to learn.
Knit-Spin-Quilt 
oooohh. I love all those fabrics and that fact that you have involved yourself in some quilting initiatives!
Thanks! I’ve changed up the fabrics a little bit since taking those pictures, but I’ve mostly added new ones. And so far I’ve found that quilt-alongs give a certain feeling of structure — and then within that, I can do whatever I want. Like writing a sonnet — very strict rules, but you can write about whatever you like. :)
I checked it out and now I am so keen on the block of the month one. Sounds like lots of fun and I think the structure would help in keeping one on track!