That Perfect Fabric

Some of you might recognize this block:

This is a block featured in the ill-fated green and purple quilt—the quilt in which I used Kona White for the background, but accidentally grabbed some Kona Snow that was sitting on my cutting table and incorporated it into the quilt. And then I didn’t notice my mistake until the quilt was quilted, bound, and hanging up for a photo. That one definitely qualifies as a mistake. I can’t pass it off as a design element.

Remaking that quilt has been on the to-do list. I don’t want to do purple and green again. That was fine back in the spring, but now I find myself gravitating toward other colorways. I’m out of all of those green and purple fabrics anyway.

Stash diving yielded up that center unit fabric. Navy blue must be resonating with me right now. The purply-blue herringbone in the large triangles and the navy blue polka dots were obvious choices. I don’t, as a rule, like white for backgrounds, and even less so now since messing up that other quilt. The center print has tiny cream-colored flowers in it. I think perhaps a nice low-volume cream fabric would be good for a background. For the test block, I grabbed this hunk of cream Moda Grunge out of the scrap basket. I like the idea, but I am not sure Grunge is the right choice. Robin Pickens’ Thatched collection might work.

Those little corner squares are giving me fits. I want a fabric there to pull that bit of light turquoise out of the center block (the cluster of three flowers on the right). I have a lot of turquoise fabrics in my stash. In fact, I would say that’s the most popular color in my stash. I have two bins of turquoise ranging from teal to peacock. You would think I could find the right color. Nope. If the fabric was the right color, it was too dark, or the wrong kind of print, or I didn’t have enough of it. The fabric you see in the block above is close—and has blue flowers printed on it that echo the center fabric nicely—but I’d like something a bit more saturated.

I took everything even remotely suitable out of my stash and held it to that center print. Sometimes the color you think you’re looking for isn’t the color that actually works.

And then I found this:

This is perfect. It’s the perfect shade, the perfect saturation, and it has tiny teal and blue accents on it.

It also has sparkles.

Sigh. Do I put a sparkly fabric in this quilt? These sparkles seem integral to the fabric, unlike glitter that comes off in the wash. (The husband does not want to go to work looking like a Disney princess.) Or do I spends hours in the fabric store hoping to find something similar sans sparkles? Should I stick with the lighter fabric that’s in the test block?

I spent three hours messing around with one test block yesterday afternoon, and 99% of that time was spent considering fabrics. I already know how to make the block.

I will let this marinate a bit, although I want to make a decision soon. I have a few other projects to keep me busy in the meantime.

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For my Kalispell peeps, I need to let you know that the Mennonite Church has decided not to hold the fair trade sale again this year. We will, however, be promoting Ten Thousand Villages on our church’s social media pages so that if you want to order items for Christmas, you can. We may also have some products that can be purchased and picked up at the church. I’ll try to remember to put those links in my blog posts as appropriate.