The purging and re-organizing of my fabric stash goes on......and on......and on. I can't spend all day working on this (and quite frankly, my mind would go numb!), so for a few hours every day, I whittle away at it. Seems I'm not the only one as my dear friend, Gloria Parsons (Olde Green Cupboard Designs) is doing exactly the same thing! She moved into a new home, so that's why she's going thru her stash, and she said in her last blog post, she's finding fabric from 10 years ago! So nice to know I'm not the only one!! Yesterday, my sorting and purging was interrupted (thank you, FedEx!!) with the delivery of two boxes of sample yardage of my new fabric lines!! That delivery will never get old. First up are the new wovens line called Prairie Wovens, Dobbies & Chambray. When Marcus asked me if I'd like to do a wovens line, I jumped at the chance. I asked if dobbie prints and a chambray could be included and they were delighted to oblige. It's very common to see a mix of wovens, dobbies and chambray paired with cottons in antique quilts of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, especially in scrappy quilts, and this gives us all a chance to work them into our reproduction Prairie and Civil War era quilts. Let me show you an example. Antique doll quilt and the inspiration for At Mama's Knee pattern in Journey One of the Prairie Women's Sewing Circle club. This is one of my favorite antique quilts. Not only is it just the cutest thing, it's an excellent example of a "Make-Do" quilt. (Click here to read about the difference between a Make-Do and Scrappy quilt.) I believe that a child made this quilt, and it has a make-do backing, too! Notice the blue woven, the pink and white dobbie, and the pink chambray fabrics. The combination of the cotton prints and the textures from the wovens is just luscious and makes the quilt all the more interesting, in mho! Here's a photo of the back showing blue chambray, more wovens and dobbies mixed with cotton prints. Using what she had, she pieced the back, no doubt from scraps of home goods, shirts, and cotton prints perhaps from dresses, aprons, or drapes. Sweet! The palette in this quilt is mostly pastels, of course, but my Prairie Wovens, Dobbies and Chambray are not. They, along with my Pin Money cotton collection are colored in my eight favorite (darker) colors: red, blue, green, plum, brown, black, gold and dusty pink. These are the colors I use all the time. String Stars quilt in the Spring 2013 issue of Primitive Quilts magazine Not sure how all of those colors would play together? Take a look at my Star Strings quilt photo above. All eight colors were used in the creation of that quilt. Would you include the pink? I L O V E the pink in there, so long as it's dark and dusty, and not bright. I'll post more examples of cotton prints and wovens pieced together when I share photos of another of my antique quilts. This spectacular make-do quilt was published in American Patchwork & Quilting magazine a few years ago....so stay tuned. :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: May I offer a friendly reminder to email me your Pocket Patchwork Orphans & Scraps quilt photos! You have about 3 weeks to send them to me. Remember, it doesn't have to be quilted or bound. Wait until you see the wide variety of ways quilters from around the world creatively set the blocks! Please email your photos, along with your name and the city and state (country) where you live, no later than April 1st. Then, be sure to visit my blog shortly there after for the official..... Airing of the Quilts (aka Show-n-Tell) Thanks for visiting with me today! Pam