Speaking of the Ribbon Box quilt (which I was in my most recent post), remember when I reported developing a fondness last month for “Flower Garden,” one of the lines on the Cloud 9 Fabrics website featuring the Ribbon Box quilt pattern? As a reminder, these are the eight prints in the Flower Garden line:

You can guess what happened: I succumbed to temptation, went online, and ordered a yard each of six prints. I chose not to order two of them, knowing I had options in my stash to replace them with.

The fabrics arrived in due course and . . . well, maybe I’m not as much in love with them as I thought I would be. See, this is one of the dangers of buying fabric on the Internet. I generally buy fabric that I can see and touch. I want to know exactly what the colors look like in real life as opposed to what I see on my computer screen. But every now and then a line of fabric I have seen online that has captivated me is not to be found in a local quilt shop. Then I might take a leap of faith and order fabric sight unseen. Such is the case with Flower Garden.

Take a look at five of the six fabrics I ordered:

These fabrics turned out to be much darker than pictured on the website. See the two fabrics in the second row? What I thought was a coral background on the one on the left is actually a dark orange and what I thought was a gold leaf print on the one on the right is actually a darker mustard-y color.

Here’s a shot of the main focus fabric featuring birds and cranes on an indigo background:

The colors in this piece are also deeper but wow, the design is really spectacular. And I have to say the companion prints look great with it. Just imagine the possibilities for fussycutting images of birds and cranes.

Wouldn’t these images make lovely inset circles? Playing around with some circles I had previously cut in freezer paper, I auditioned a bird and a crane . . .

. . . and then two birds and a crane . . .

. . . and then three birds:

The companion prints to the main focus fabric could easily be combined to make a striking quilt or table runner or wall hanging. I’m going to ponder about what to make with these fabrics. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

In the meantime, I’ll see if I can learn to love these fabrics just a bit more. Do you ever buy fabrics online and then find they don’t live up to your expectations?