Tips for choosing fabrics

I’m glad to present you the 2022 SUMMER QUILT ALONG “Choose your own adventure quilt” a wonderful quilt along organized by Katie Blakesley and where I was invited as a Guest Expert (yay!)

Spend the summer making a Choose Your Own Adventure Sampler Quilt! You’ll get everything you’ve come to expect from the Summer Sampler patterns—9 block patterns, Welcome Guide with fabric requirements, coloring pages, FAQs, finishing instructions, designer tips and tricks, and much more—for just $34.99.

Remember to use the code CAROLINA for $5 off until JUNE 3 , 2022

For that reason today I’m going to give you some tips for choosing your colors and fabrics, that is one of my favorite parts in the Quiltmaking process.

All my examples are using just solids, but you can follow the same idea using prints. Also I’m using fabrics from my stash (I always recommend to my students to “use what you have in the best way as possible”) that means that sometimes the colors are not perfect or not quite exactly what you are looking for, but that’s life right?

1.- Use the chromatic circle

And start looking for different combinations using different color schemes, some examples for the 2022 Summer Quilt Along:

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2.- Think in color value

“Value does all the work but color gets all the glory” …I love this quote because it is so true. You don’t need to pick a lot of different colors, maybe just two or four (or even just one) but picking different values for each of those colors.

3.- Use the coloring pages

Almost all my planned designs start with paper and pencils, so I play with colors to create different color palettes and color layouts. Also you can use any app or software for that too (I love to use Procreate and EQ8). Below are my coloring pages for each of the 4 different color palettes that I choose for this quilt along .

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4.- Pick your fabrics

Using as a reference the colors that you used to coloring your design, start looking at your stash for those colors in your fabrics. Avoid perfection! It is the enemy of progress…..As we are working with fabrics that already have a color probably is impossible to have the perfect color, so use what you have in the best possible way.

Color palette 1. Color palette 2

Color palette 3. Color palette 4

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5.- Label your fabrics

In order to have everything organized, label your fabrics (a simple piece of painters tape works perfectly), specially if your are going to work with different values per hue. In that way you are pretty sure that the final quilt will be the same as in your coloring page!

Finally… start cutting!

I really hope that these tips help you to select your fabrics for this wonderful 2022 Quilt Along.

Greetings from São Paulo,

Carolina