Freestyle Block of the Month - Shop Picks

Our Freestyle Block of the Month is just around the corner and as promised in a previous post, we're going to show you our picks for the project - yes from our very own stashes. 

Diane is first up.  If you read the newsletter, then this will sound familiar.  But she decided she wanted to do a blue and white quilt. She had some blues and whites in her stash, and initially picked out a blue and white French General print, but while looking through her stuff she rediscovered some wonderful Dutch Indigos she bought in the 90's.  They are 8" squares, and were pricey even by the standards of the time. She's adored these prints for years, but could never bear to cut them. She'd been saving them for the "right" quilt but questioned what that meant and whether or not she was only saving them to look at every few years but do nothing with. From there she tossed in some other prints from her stash that complemented the Indigos, and there it was - her palette was ready to go.

In case anyone is curious or concerned, when she cut into the first piece to make Block 1, the world did not end. Not even so much as a tremor.  She mused that as quilters we get kind of possessive of these special fabrics and then they sit and mature in our stashes but don't get made up into anything.  A great tip to pick up from her color selections is that maybe it is time to revisit and reimage some of your most precious pieces of fabric that, like her Indigos, were aging on the shelf waiting for the "right" quilt.  

Lauren had a different hurdle to get over than getting into the mindset to use prized pieces.  Whereas Diane had a pretty clear idea of what she wanted to do for the quilt...Lauren had no clue what she wanted to do.  She spent what is (probably) a silly amount of time thinking about it.  Should she use a fat quarter pack she'd been hoarding away?  Another scrap quilt?  Yet another "Falloween" themed thing?  Nope, nope, and nope.  She tried several times to find a color scheme, and kept coming up with bupkis. If you haven't read our previous post How to Get Over a Color Choice Rut, go give it a read because here's the proof in the pudding. She walked away from picking colors a few times as suggested.  But inspiration eventually hit in the form of finding inspiration in music.  

She was listening to a playlist while working on a different project, and the song "Green Man" came on. The song is about the Green Man and the changing of seasons, specifically the change from winter to spring.  How appropriate!   This made her think of foliage and the wide range of greens we see in the springtime as everything is leafing out. She went for everything in her stash that was leafy and green (much of which has punches of purple, go figure!). This time, a song playing in the background did the trick. 

Hopefully this helps give you some ideas with what to use in your own stash!  Let us know in the comments what you're thinking of using.