It's Good to Have Stash

I've been working on the February Schnibbles quilt, I.S.T.H. Sinta claims "I.S.T.H." is an anagram for a four letter word--you can probably figure it out--but Carrie Nelson, Schnibbles designer extraordinaire, claims it simply stands for "Insert Snappy Title Here." Whatever it is, it's a fun quilt to make.

For my version, I decided to change the setting a little bit because I wanted a quilt I could use on my kitchen table; in other words, I wanted something that looked the same from all sides and was square. Here's a photo of my quilt top:

Here's a photo of the original pattern, so you can see what changes I made. I love the checkerboard sections at the top and bottom, but I didn't think it would work for what I wanted.

For the most part, I used charm packs from the Blueberry Crumb Cake line, but I didn't have any yardage to go with it, so I had to "shop" my stash. I settled on the blue and white stripe early on, but the fabric I used for the setting squares and side triangles was harder. In fact, I first pulled out a beautiful blue, beige, and green watercolor floral. I even cut all the pieces and put them on the design wall along with the pieced blocks, but I decided the floral pattern overwhelmed the pieced blocks.

I hate to waste fabric and have to start all over again, but as I was trying to decide what to try to lighten up the quilt, my eye spotted this Debbie Mumm bird fabric in my stash:

I thought it was worth a try, so I took down the floral and cut squares of the bird fabric--it looked much, much nicer to me!

I wish I'd taken a photo of the floral fabric to show you, but I was deep into experimentation at the time and didn't think of it until later.

I like the way this one has turned out and I think it will look great in the kitchen for summer, don't you? Of course, I still have to quilt it. Sometimes I feel that having a large stash is a bit of a hinderance, because I wonder when I'll ever use it or if it will just languish on the shelves, but at other times, like today, I'm very grateful to have a variety of choices at hand. During my first few years as a quilter, I felt that having a good stash was as important as it is for an artist to have a variety of colors to chose from. Do you agree, or do you prefer to only purchase exactly what you need for a specific project?