Choosing Color... A Guide

Hello Everyone,

Over the years, I have had many questions on how I choose color for my quilts, and more so once I have chosen color how do I choose the fabric?   Another BIG question is how do you use those wonderful prints, I just don't know how to use them or cut them up?

Sometimes there is no easy answer or they may be multiple answers.  I am going to do my best to give you some answers, at least as I see them.

To many of my readers the above block may look familiar.  I just profiled it this week in my blog post here.  This block is from a quilt that I made for Quilt Magazine called Soul Flower.  I wanted to show you a completely different color option, so I made the block above with colors that are vibrant and non expectant.

The above photo show the quilt from the magazine and as you can see the block looks totally different, right?  So this is that example of using those wonderful prints and cutting them up to use in a block.  The prints in the first photo are mostly larger scale prints than in the second photo.

Here is my rule of thumb for larger scale prints.  I like to look at it as one color.  Choose the dominant color and see it as that.  The print is the texture.  Are you following?  If you do this, you have a whole new outlook on how to use those prints.  I made the block in the first photo saying to myself that I wanted a hot pink and green block with some accent colors of purple and yellow.  Then I went to my stash and started pulling fabric with colors that worked together.

I think it was successful.  Now in the second photo the colors also work together because there are common colors in each fabric so they draw from one another giving it a cohesive look.  That is what makes this work.

Also, in a recent blog post, I featured my quilt Paradise Island.  In that post, I showed you two color options.  But the good folks over at Quilt Magazine have been kind enough to provide a FREE download for you.  It is a line drawing of my design so that you can take out those colored pencils and make you own color way!!  

Click here to get the download.  

You can see above that I did the download and started coloring in the lines.  This is a great way to choose color for your quilt.  It doesn't involve cutting into any fabric and gives you a relatively quick way to see what it might look like.

You can order the magazine by clicking here.

For those of you who use computers to design your quilts, there are specific programs out there like EQ.  But for those of you who don't have it here is another option.  I have a Mac and use their Numbers program to design all my quilts.  Numbers is the equivalent to Microsoft Excel.  

It is a great way to use the actual fabrics!  Yes, you can use the images of the fabrics that you want to use in the quilt by either scanning or using the jpegs from the websites.  

In the photos above and below you can see how I came up with the two different color ways for Paradise Island.

Using this program might be a great lesson for anyone wanting to learn.  If you have a Mac and are interested in learning let me know.  If I have enough interested, I just might consider doing several tutorial posts.