Cutting Up My Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society Stash

Turkey Tracks: March 4, 2022

Cutting Up My Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society Stash

This fabric category in my stash needs to be USED. These fabrics WANT to be used. Over the years, I’ve made so many quilts using these beloved fabrics, but now I want to whittle them down and meld what is left into my regular stash.

So, I’ve been on a winter journey to take on this challenge, and I’m cutting deeply into this stash driven by the task of making a series of baby quilts for family members now having babies.

Here’s what my quilt room looks like right now as this BIG task takes place. I’ve set aside fabrics I can use for fussy-cut centers for the Churn Dash blocks I’m making (“Eye Candy” series) and bigger pieces that will be used in sashings, backings, and bindings.

The front of the longarm has mostly low-volume prints ironed and ready to cut.

But there are other low-volume fabrics in this bin below. The pink/salmon prints are going to go into another of the scrappy lap quilts I’ve making from 3 1/2-inch blocks. It will want to go to a girl (“Pot-Pourri 3”). There are three big fabric pieces in this bin and a stack of grey and cream/black prints. This bin used to be so full that I could hardly close the lid. Success!

The darker colors are on the longarm table—and you can see some of the colors have been seriously whittled down. More success!

This table below holds strips that will go into scrappy Churn Dash blocks (“Eye Candy” series)—and when I have leftovers from that process, I’ll cut those remnants into smaller squares. As I cut into the stash, I always cut some strips for this project table. Likely, there will be something made from 2 1/2-inch squares at some point. There are also 2-inch and 1 1/2-inch blocks happening.

I’ve posted already a modern quilt (“Whirlygigs”) that went to a new baby girl. And there was a recent post showing one of the scrappy lap-sized quilts (“Pot-Pourri”) and one of the Churn Dash quilts (“Eye Candy”) that landed in their forever homes.

This scrappy quilt (made of 9-patch blocks), ”Pot-Pourri 2,” is ready to be sewn into rows:

And then I’ll piece a backing and organize binding. This quilt will go with a Churn Dash quilt (“Eye Candy 2”) where the binding is almost done now. Here is a sneak peek of one of those blocks:

Meanwhile, LOL, I’m months behind on The Color Collective projects. But they aren’t going anywhere, and there is something really satisfying about heavily using these Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star fabrics all together rather than just folding them into the stash.

And…

Like many quilters working during the conditions of the virus, something sparked inside me that thought it was time to work with what I had on hand rather than buying more fabric. There are the monthly solid fabrics coming in for The Color Collective however… But there are projects designed for those, and I will get to them eventually. Meanwhile the big stash is NOT growing.