Parts Dept. to the Rescue

We have two nieces who were expecting babies this year. One child has already arrived, the other is due in a couple of months. I hadn't done a thing in preparation to welcome these new arrivals when the first baby came into the world at the end of March.  Fortunately, things timed out well for me in terms of my health, etc. I pulled a piece out of my fabric stash that I thought was a panel print. It turned out to be a wide border of these darling sheep along one selvedge edge with clouds floating in a blue sky for the remainder of the width of fabric.

I cut the fabric into as many 8.5" squares as I could, then went to my Parts Department to see what I could use for alternate blocks. The postage stamp stars were the best fit. There weren't quite enough of the cloud squares to fill out the 5 x 6 grid I'd created so I had to find something else to fill in the empty spots.

This print was whimsical but spoke too loudly. (The colors looked better together in person than they do in the photograph.) After another rummage through the stacks of green in my collection I found a stylized leaf print that seemed to work. 

It's a quieter print, more in keeping with the clouds. The next step was to add borders of some sort. I considered piano keys in an assortment of blues and greens but didn't have the energy to follow through on that plan. In the end I decided on a one inch frame of the small leaf print and a three inch (finished) final border of larger acanthus-type leaves. 

I even had enough of that blue print to cut the strips according to the direction of the print!

 

The next trick will be to find sufficient yardage or appropriate colors and prints to build a back. This is not a large quilt, roughly 48" x 56" when finished, but my supply of larger pieces of fabric has been dwindling and not replenished. You never know what will turn up though!