I’ve been haunting fabric shops, digging through boxes of scraps at pre-owned fabric sales, going through my own stash, and hitting up all my quilting acquaintances for fabric over the last few weeks.
Three posts ago, I promised an update on the fabric replacements I’ve found. Here is the success I’ve had so far.
NOTE: In each of these sections, the top row shows the original missing fabrics, and the bottom row shows the replacements I’ve found.
Cream With Red
There are more blocks (32!) of this color group than any other, and Paulette had only 6 fabrics, 3 of which were missing. I scored with some Moda fabrics from Keepsake Cottage Fabrics. They aren’t exact matches for the design, but they’re close on the colors, and evoke the same feeling. I also had some scraps of my own from other projects that can replace the missing fabric for a few of the blocks if necessary.
White With Pink/Red
I only needed one fabric for this, and white with dirty pink or white with red has proven one of the easier fabrics to find. I believe I got this one at Keepsake Cottage as well. They deserve a big shout-out for being such a great local resource for Civil War era reproduction fabrics – thanks, Keepsake Cottage Fabrics!
Tan
I found the one with the dots at Pacific Fabrics, and I worry that it’s a little too modern-looking for this quilt. What do you all think? Tan has not been too hard to find, so I can probably replace the replacement if needed. The leafy one came from a bag of scraps I got at the Seattle ReCreative fabric sale earlier this month. I don’t have a whole lot of this one, but I got almost 1/2 yard of the darker tan vines fabric from my friend and fellow quilt guild member, Becca. Between those two fabrics, I should be able to replace all the blocks that were supposed to be done with the paisley.
Light Silvery Green
This color has turned out to be the bane of my existence. Nobody is making fabric in light silvery green these days. I found the first one at Keepsake Cottage, and the background color is right, but I’m not as excited about the flowers being taupe. It’ll do in a pinch though. The second one is something I found when, in desperation, I went to the Hancock Fabrics going-out-of-business sale. The color is okay (maybe a little dark), the pattern is fine, but the fabric feels really coarse and stiff. I’m going to wash it and if it still feels weird, I’ll need to replace this replacement.
Medium-Light Green
This was the group that it turned out I didn’t need … Paulette had 12 fabrics for 16 blocks, so I could just use more of some of the other eight (non-missing) fabrics I had for these blocks. That being said, I got an exact match for one of the missing ones from Becca. I didn’t think that I would find exact matches for any of them 14 years after they were originally purchased, so this was an awesome surprise.
Olive Green
There’s only one row here, because these fabrics weren’t even in my original list of missing fabrics. Once I took a look at the quantity of fabric Paulette had for these blocks, I realized there wasn’t enough to do all of the triangles I’d planned to do. So, I’ve been looking for some olive green fabrics. I had a few scraps of my own, and got a couple of possibles from Becca (shown above), but I’d be willing to augment that with a little more if I come across something good.
Dark Green
There were only two dark green fabrics for a total of two blocks missing. I had no trouble replacing these at Keepsake Cottage. The style is not exactly the same, but I love both of the dark green fabrics I found (especially the paisley one).
Multi-Color Floral
Keepsake Cottage to the rescue again! The print I found is not exactly the same as Paulette’s original choice, but it has a similar green for the background, and cream and dark pink/red flowers. I think it’ll do.
I still haven’t found a replacement for the center block fabric, and I’m toying with using this fabric for the center block too.
Thanks to all that have helped me find awesome fabrics that match Paulette’s intended color palette!