Choosing Fabrics & A New Class

Choosing fabrics for a quilt can be intimidating or inspiring. It all depends on how you look at the process. Most of the time, I think it's fun. But sometimes, we all need a little push.

The best way to get started when it just isn't coming together quickly is to choose one fabric that either inspires you or that contains colors that inspire you.

Awhile ago I took a class. The supply list was very vague in terms of what I should choose:

An assortment of themed fabrics and backgrounds.

Hmm, that just wasn't much help for me. So, what I did to help me get inspired was to choose one fabric that I just loved. For this class it was this brown paisley fabric. I happen to love paisleys. And I really liked these colors.

So, the next step was to collect paisley prints that echoed the colors in that one fabric. I arranged them in terms of value from light to dark. Do I have a fairly even distribution of lights, mediums and darks?

Then I arranged them in terms of color families. I had pinks and purples, oranges and browns, and lime greens and olive greens.

See that little bit of bright blue poking out of the upper left-hand purple fabric. That blue just isn't going to work. But I loved the purple. So, I fussy cut my squares to eliminate the blue and just used the purple.

Do you need some help when it comes to choosing fabrics for your quilts? Well, don't worry! We will be introducing a new class this summer using a fairly new book on the market, Color For The Terrified Quilter.

Learn more about the color wheel, values and intensities. Don't let color intimidate you. It can be fun and exciting.

And, by the way... Here's the finished quilt, in case you were wondering. Now, if I could just get around to quilting it!