Stash serendipity and a finish

Let's start with the finish. This baby quilt is done and ready to be sent off to welcome little Brooklyn Faith in Nebraska! She is the brand new daughter of my stepmother's nephew and his wife. 

Earlier this month when we were visiting California, I asked my stepmom what colors and/or theme new mama-to-be April had chosen for the nursery. The answer was turquoise chevrons with touches of pink and purple. Oh, and maybe there were owls on some of the decorations. 

I knew I had exactly the right fabric: this super cute panel featuring owls, and their friends the hedgehog, the little birdie, and the fox. 

I pieced the chevrons out of coordinating fabrics from my stash, and used a tonal white on cream floral background. The back is pieced with pale turquoise polka dots and a subtle, small chevron print. A darker turquoise binding ties it all together.

I free motion quilted this cute little baby blanket with an overall flower motif that echoes the background fabric. You can see the pretty background fabric in this photo, too. I admit I was pretty darned proud that I was able to pull together this quilt completely from items in my stash. My Dad and Stepmom will be visiting the new baby next week and will have a chance to see this quilt in person, which is also really fun.

In stash accumulation news, I received this big batch last week. The stack on the left contains some brown and gold silk dupioni and some cotton/linen blends. In the last several months, I've tried quilting with both of those types of fabrics and really liked the results, so I decided to keep my eyes peeled for good deals. The linen blends in those citrusy solids will make an interesting piece, I think.

The middle and right hand stacks are all from the same eBay seller. The listing that originally caught my eye contained the solid-reading purples and a couple of nice metallics. With shipping, the price came to around $4 per yard. When I find a seller who is listing largish (2+ yards) pieces at those kinds of prices, I look at their other listings to see if combining the shipping on multiple listings will net even better per yard prices. Sure enough, this seller had some other interesting batches and I loaded up. My net cost came down to closer to $2 per yard and I'm happy with that!

These kinds of mixed lots often contain "weird" fabrics that I would have never given a second glance to in a quilt shop. I'll unpack them and think, "Huh. What will I ever use that for? Maybe I'll resell that later." And yet, they all seem to work their way into some project or another, when I least expect it.

One of the lots contained the four black and white fabrics. I have almost nothing in black and white, as it doesn't usually speak to me as kid-friendly for Project Linus. However, I often admire other quilter's work in black and white, so I added them to my shopping cart. Someday I'll find them useful.

The day after my order arrived, Kat announced the August Covered in Love blocks: disappearing nine patches in black and white with one bright accent color. Woo hoo, I now have EXACTLY the right fabric for those! I sewed up five blocks for her and put them in the mail today. 

Whooooo would have guessed stash serendipity would happen so quickly?