Picking Fabric like a Pro!
I ask a couple of questions right up front when helping people pick fabric for a new project (or when I go to pick fabric for my own projects). It helps to get a feel for where the project is going. Number one is: who is this for? If it's for their son-in-law, I know to steer clear of anything girly-looking. You can start with one fabric that seems to set the tone and work from there; this is usually considered the focus fabric. One more thing to think about is the overall feel you want the quilt to have. Do you want a bold clear statement, a soft romantic tone, or an earthy natural shade? This will determine the fabrics you ultimately put together.
Some fabrics have a gray or cream undertone that sends the color in a whole different direction. One way to see if this is the case is to take a picture of the fabrics all lined up, side by side. I don't turn the picture to black and white though. The photo has a way of flattening out the colors so you can get a better idea of the value that is underneath the color. I rarely use the little colored dots printed on the selvage edge; they are very misleading because they don’t represent the feel of the original fabric. It’s more like the numbers printed on a paint can label saying so many squirts of this and so many squirts of that went into making this color.
Here's my process... I start with an inspiration board something like this. This helps me stay on track when other pretty shades tempt me at the fabric store!
I love the super soft pale pink trending lately. I'm not a pink girl at all, but something about this almost nude/white/pink is very refreshing. I took these pics to the fabric store with me and started the hunt for my focus fabric, the cherry blossom fabric. From there, I worked my way backward trying to get as close to white as possible with all the shades in between. What I want is a kind of ombre star on an eggshell white background.
Here is another example of this process on a Metro Rings quilt I made a while back. This one has thirty-five shades from white all the way to deep seafoam turquoise. Yes, thirty-five different colors! I planned it out ahead of time so I would know where the color breaks would be, and then headed to the fabric store. I took several pictures to see the value flatten out and rearranged the bolts over and over again. The finished quilt is one of my favorites and worth the extra planning.
My Entangled Sky quilt started with a similar process.
I wanted to capture all the colors in a sunset and watch the “sky” change. Here is the collage of inspiration shots I collected before going to the fabric store…
You can see, I chose three shades in each of the three main “cloud” colors. I started with the darkest shade of each and worked my way backward.
This helped keep things balanced, even though I was working with gold, orange, and purple. Their values are pretty suited for each other because their anchor fabric,
(or darkest shade) is balanced with the others.
In the end, I find inspirational pictures super helpful. It also gives quilt shop staff something to go by if they are trying to help you pick out fabric!
Happy Sunday, everyone!
Krista
Follow all my quilty adventures on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Visit my YouTube channel for free tutorials and tips. If you like my patterns, you can buy them on Etsy, and here on the website.