The Story of a Stash

Bear with me while I tell you a story..................a few years back me and my Sewing Bee Buddies attended Pat Archibald's Creative Journey course.It was a super course that lasted for five Saturdays, one a month, and taught us the basic principles of design. In preparation we had to decide upon a journey we had made which was memorable to us and start collecting some fabrics that we thought might suit our subject.
My journey was all about Queensland and the Tropical rainforest and I began my relationship with - green fabric.....

Our course culminated in the making of a fabric cover for our sketchbooks.

The following year was 2007 and my project for classes that year was the Mystery Quilt - I made mine along with, or just ahead of all the classes and chose to use many of the fabrics I had collected for my Journey, with the addition of a few more....

I added in quite a few browns and beiges but popped a few greens in and also used my favourite stripey fabric in the borders.
2008/9 I felt it was time to produce a new sample for my Beginners class and guess what, I used the same fabrics, well, we were in the grip of a recession.........

Still had lots of that stripe left............I also looked thro my fat 1/4s and decided that 8 of them and a Mystery Quilt orphan block would combine to make an adequate backing.

and then I embroidered its label which will forever remind me of an aborted house sale!

You'd think it was all over by now but no - around this time a friend generously gave me a pile of Moda fabric, not sure which range but lots of Paisley patterns and sludgy greens..mmmmm.

Just the fabric for my Pic'n'Mix quilt that became the class project 2009/10.

 

 I even managed a couple of matching cushions - if you click on them you will see a very rare thing - hand quilting!! LOL.

I must have been determined to finish that stash, because I put together a backing of chunks of fabric, orphan blocks and sample blocks.

Many months passed following the completion of Pic'n'Mix, we moved house, classes continued....................................our living room took shape and we painted a "feature wall" - green!

Actually, I'll have you know, it's "Overtly Olive".

I have become a keen, well obsesive, if I am honest, blogger and have to say I have been inspired by many young quilters out there who are keeping quilting very much alive and kicking. I am loving all the modern stuff I see and have come across a new description of using scraps...improv quilting...............so I pulled out my scraps and made these............

 

I really enjoyed making these cushions, they were totally improvised, no planning apart from using the absolute leftovers from that stash! (the wee blocks were all class samples and just languishing in a drawer)

I used one or two new techniques in the making - watch this space, they have the making of a fun workshop........

Here endeth the story of a stash...........think it's time to move on to brights now.What do you think?