Fishing around in my Fabric ...

... actually more like digging it out and spreading it around in piles all over the place, digging around in the piles and then stuffing most of it back in the cupboard but not nescessarily neatly and not always where it came from ...

so why was I doing that instead of in here making a bit more effort to at least sort of half keep up with "blogtoberfest"?
(at this rate I will be lucky to do a post a week, let alone the post a day we are supposed to do!)

Strange as it may seem, and sometimes it doesn't appear to be the case, but I also have other things in my life besides blogging ... although what I was doing does relate to what I do in cyberspace - LOL

- I have been choosing fabric for the mystery quilt I am doing on this yahoogroup

There are a lot of us doing it, and we are having a lot of fun - lol

This is actually "MQ11" ... because it is the 11th one we have done on this list! The first one was about 10 years ago (I joined the list the night before we started sewing the first one!) ... then the list kind of went to sleep after we had done 10 of them (and I have actually done all 10 ... well ... only finished some of them, but started them all - just have not finished them all ... yet) ... all was quiet for a few years ... then someone decided to wake the list up ... and I am glad they did!

We actually got instructions for choosing our fabric just over a week ago, and the cutting instructions were put up on Saturday ... so of course I am only just choosing my fabrics now - LOL

actually I started digging around and looking for some suitable fabric a few days ago ... but ... I only found one lot of "maybe" and then life got in the way for a few days ...



trouble with that lot is ... I don't know how well it would work with the fact that the background of the chilli fabric matches the backgrounds of the plain red and black ... (I also realised later, once the cutting instructions were posted, that those 2 chilli fabrics would have been the ones that got cut up into little strips) ... so would be a bit of a waste of a cute design fabric, that has a lot of potential to use it in a design where the matching/blending colours could be used to do that on purpose ... so I might see if I can find time to try and design a quilt just for these fabrics - lol

or maybe some/all of these as well? LOL



so ... the "maybe" became a "yes I will use them, but not for this quilt"

... so back to the stash to see what else I could find ... I did a LOT of digging around in there last night ...

and came up with these ...



(no not the stuff in the plastic bags - that is a sample of some alpacca hair, plus a bit of stray sheeps wool thrown in with it, both of which came from the Murrumbateman Field day, which DH and I went to on Saturday ... and a bag of emu feathers which someone gave to me at a thing I went to at the Dunlop Grasslands, which are "just over there" [andrea points roughly in the direction of the front door] ... it was a nature talk/walk and the launch of an information pamphlet ... and I took lots of photos of flowers/etc LOL)

er ... back to that photo, and the subject I WAS talking about ...

the pile of green/brown fabric on the left is enough for the single bed size version, on the right is ok for the lap quilt size ...

... I thought I had chosen my fabrics ... but I just wasn't so sure about that lot on the left ... the top one matches some of the others but doesn't quite "go" with them ... and the browns go together too well ... I kept grabbing that green one on the far left and trying to find other blue/green/etc fabrics to go with it but just couldn't get the combination we needed ... had to have a light, medium and dark (and another medium/dark for the single bed and double sizes and also a medium/light if we wanted to do the queen size) ... and a couple of the bits of fabric had to be fairly big ... and I don't have a lot of big bits ... and most of what I do have don't go with each other - LOL

I wanted to do a single bed size and maybe a lap size as well ... but I kept finding fabrics that would only do a lap size - like the pile on the right in the photo above, and this one:



btw ... the bottom middle fabric (looks almost white) is actually some fabric that I "dyed" with condy's crystals - to look like sand ... for a quilt I WAS going to make for something a few years ago but didn't get time to make yet ... story of my life that - lol

This pile of fabrics is still a "goer" ... when I went to bed last night I think I had decided to do this and the other lap quilt size (the wildflowers/orange/green/brown/etc) ... but I ended up deciding that I would not use either of those other 2 piles ...
(although I wouldn't mind using the top 3 fabrics from the lap quilt pile - the wildfowers and orange bits and the big bit of dark green - together in something ... one day ... lol)

... this lot was still calling "come and find me"



I kept grabbing the bits of green fabric and these ...



... and a few others ... but this afternoon I realised that I had been trying to choose them all around the 2 on the left in the above photo ... which, once I read the cutting instructions I realised it was totally silly to actually use those 2 where I was going to use them (we needed 2 smaller bright bits of fabric that sort of needed to stand out a bit) because they get cut up into narrow little strips ... so all my kokopelli/animals and cats would end up being sliced in half, or smaller!

so more digging ... what else could I use for those 2 bright bits?
(I even tried using a few other brighter things with one or both of those 2 bits as other fabrics ;)

why am I having so much trouble deciding? ... I guess I always take ages ... then often use/do something weird for my fabric choices ... and (maybe because I DO take so long to decide?) whatever I eventually choose has always worked out looking good ...

... even when I do something totally weird, like I did for MQ2 - and used GOLD LAME as one of my fabrics!



I am glad I did ...

(I really should finish that quilt one day!)

... and strangely enough ... I also have some of that same lame fabric (came from the same garage sale I think) in green and blue ...

so ... yes ... I just HAD to do it ...

- so I had a look what fabrics I could find to go with the lame ... and I found some!



enough for a single bed size quilt in fact! ...

I thought I was going to be short one fabric ... wasn't sure what I could use for the "medium" ... noticed I only needed a fairly small bit ... so had another dig in the pile that was still in the cupboard and found the fishy fabric and measured it ... it was the right width - good ... how long do I need it to be? - 35cm ... how long IS it? ... 36cm! LOL

- it must have been "meant to be"?

... too bad if a quilt with lame fabric on it is not that practical to use for camping/etc or to put on my side of the bed when I am cold and DH isn't (which is the whole reason I wanted to make a single bed size quilt in the first place!) ... I guess it will just have to be the one I take to sleep under on quilting retreats or something - LOL (although I probably will still use it on my side of the bed eventually ... just not while we have a rather large dog who likes sleeping all over the bed ... and sometimes even wrestling with us there as well!)

I wonder if the fishy fabric will stay as the 6 1/2" squares the instructions say to cut it into, of if it will end up getting cut/etc into something smaller? lol

so ... it looks like I AM making a single bed size after all ... and I will probably do the pink/brown/grey/etc lap quilt at the same time, if I can find time to do all the cutting and sewing for both each week ... (not that I need more lap quilts - but what ELSE would I use those 2 weird pink/brown/grey bits of fabric for? ... strangely enough, even though they are not "my" colours I DO like them ... but I don't think I have a lot of other fabric they would go with - lol
I guess I can use the chilli/etc fabric to make something the right size for my half of the bed/camping/whatever ... or finish one of the other MQs that is about the right size ... I have one that is almost finished actually - I got it half quilted (doing it myself - I like to say I did everything not just the peicing) then I put it aside for later because I had something else I wanted to do/start ... and kind of never got back to it ... oops

er ... I should be asleep ... it is now about 2 hours later than the time on this post (the time on the bottom is when I started typing it ... unless I change it to some other time ... which I did not do this time ... LOL) ... which means it is at least 3 hours later than I should still be up, seeing I have to go to work in the morning! ... sigh ...