Originally Posted by J.M.
Last december I bought background fabric for a quilt, I needed 11 meters but they only had 7 on roll - but they could order it, they said. All right, I bought the 7 meters, but it is now august and they still have no idea when the rest of my fabric is going to be in. So I found another store - a webshop I had ordered from before - that had the same fabric. Everything matched, number, line, brand, even the picture. But now I've got it and although it is the same fabric, the color difference is BIG. I have no idea why, different color bath, maybe the fabric from the store was out in the light too long, I don't know. But there is no way I can use both of them in my quilt. *cries*
Luckily I haven't started my quilt yet (I was smart enough to wait until I had all my fabric), but now I have a dilemma. I need to start searching for a good background fabric again (difficult enought the first time) and I need 11 meters of it (almost impossible to do, even though it need not be one piece); or I could use the 7 meters I have and find another fabric that looks nice with it and use that for all the sashing. The last one seems like a good option but I don't know if the 7 meters will be enough for all the blocks (they say about 7 1/2 yards for this quilt, which means I might just have enough - or I might just be a bit short, probably the latter), and it would change how I want the quilt to look. But after almost a year, I am dispairing of actually finding 11 meters of fabric...
I have been in this position before. I would "do the math" on the blocks and figure out exactly how much fabric is needed for the blocks. Maybe the pattern was written in with a bit of extra fabric built in. You wouldn't really know, though, unless you figure out how much of the background each block needs.
If there is no built in extra then I would look for a different sashing fabric. Or if the second batch of fabric is that really
that off then maybe you could use that as the sashing. It might add a different dimension especially since the pattern orginally called for the same sashing and background fabric.
I would also post an ISO on the board with a picture of the fabric. Someone might have some in their stash from roughly around the time that you bought the original. Good luck - things will work out.