And we're off. I have officially begun digging into the Use It or Lose It Stash Challenge (#useitorloseitstashchallenge) here at Surrounded by Scraps. And as any fabric addict will do, I began with the inspiration print that I was most hesitant to give up - a lovely little faerie fabric in warm earth tones from Hoffman (pictured at the bottom of the following photo). The only reason this particular fabric ended up on the chopping block in the first place is a combination of little factors: I purchased it easily over 7 years ago; although I have used it in several projects over the years, I have passed it by in recent years when looking for kid-friendly prints; the palette is terribly out of vogue (but among my favorites). I still think this fabric has some great potential and am not willing to let it go!

So using the sweet faeries as a jumping off point I started gathering some coordinating fabrics, 5 of which were also pulled from the UIOLI (Use It Or Lose It) pile. At the time I put this collection together, I still had no ideas of WHAT to do with them, just that something must be started and soon.

Thank goodness for Pinterest! I was able to spend part of an evening reviewing my Patchwork Inspiration board and was hit with an "Aha!" moment. I knew my plan for these as soon as I saw this awesome triangle quilt by CoraQuilts:

Click photo to see original link at Flickr.com

And then this quilt photo from the Fancy Tiger Crafts website:

I decided to dive in and start cutting triangles.

This was me trying to be conservative with the number of prints I use. I really tried dialing it back from my usual super-scrappy default. I can play with these on their own, right? Let's see how they look up on the design wall...

Enh, it's okay, but it's missing something. Too many prints? Can there really be such a thing?? Maybe too many prints that are all the same value. That must be it. And maybe I should throw in the alternate contrast blocks like Carla's use of the blue solids.

OR... maybe I just need to spice it up with some Kaffe and friends!!

...to be continued.