Five Favourites

I saw this linky party at Suz's blog Patchworknplay and Mary's blog Mollyflanders-all you need to do is select some of your favourite fabrics.  I could not resist digging in my boxes to pull out my favourites- these are the ones that make me a little sentimental, I don't ever want them to end.   I do the same with gloves, t shirts, pjamas, I really need to get a grip and move on...

These are in no particular order, but first is this floral print by Sevenberry.  

I first saw this when Amy used to sell delicious stacks of handpicked selections of fabrics.  I bought an FQ then, then I found some more elsewhere earlier this year, and I haven't seen it since.  A great aqua and incredibly usable.

The next two are an old print by Kumiko Fujita.  Ayumi put a scrap of this in a parcel a while ago for me and I used it to make a bit of a breakthrough block for me- Vintage spools.  I found the aqua on Etsy- it was a random listing and I have just swapped with Tamiko for the peachy FQ.  

This red cooking print is by Suzuko Koseki.  You can still find it on Etsy.  I first saw this in her book, Machine Made Patchworks- now  translated as Patchwork Style.  I bought the book a couple of  years ago and it was an epiphany for me of patchworking style and fabrics.  I didn't even know Suzuko Koseki was the author or that she had designed the fabrics, I was just transfixed by the texty kitchen imagery.

I had to include some vintage in my favourite five.  I am not sure where this little dotty scrap came from, but it is a precious little scrap.   It is so vibrant and buzzy, all those little lines make it come to life for me, a tiny piece but well used.

Aprons are a great source of vintage fabric, I picked this one up a while ago from the car boot sale and I have used it on a number of little projects.  Like the other vintage scrap it has a dynamic feel- all the quite circles and squares dancing around and the colour combination is a favourite.

Check out the others at the linky party, it is interesting to see what others pick and why.  I could have kept choosing forever, I feel like I left some out, they wait for another time...

What to choose?

Today I will choose decongestant... I am under the weather so a rare day off work, there is nothing like being self employed to make you 'well' nearly all the time!  Today I couldn't quite achieve that but I can't stay in bed all day and I need to be upright so a quick blog is my medication- along with the aspirin.

I'm not planning on spitting by the way... Brief thoughts on how I choose fabrics for a new project.  I am going to use the wonky star baby quilt form my quilt-a-long as an example but I do this pretty much everytime I make something and more than one fabric is involved.   I rely on having a picture in my head which sometimes I sketch out but  generally don't- I know this may not be the most helpful start.  Back to sharing.  Pink is going to be the dominant colour in this quilt, set against a background of creamy white- Kona cotton in Snow.  So, I pull out all the pinks in my stash and lay them on a white canvas art board.  

These fabrics are for the triangle points so I am looking for pinks that will contrast with the white solid and the white based square centres of the stars. Immediately you can see that some are wrong- too blue, wrong shade not pink enough, too much white.  I pull them out and look at what's left.  Sometimes I might go back to the reject pile and reconsider, reassess- nothing is set in stone.  In the pile of rejects I can get an idea for a futre project- there is a lot of gentle apricot pinks in here that would look good together.

 

This is what I went for.  Sometimes this process stretches out.  If I am doing log cabin  I keep the inital pile of fabrics out and dip in and resort and cut as I am going along.  A bit messy but works for me!

How do you choose?