I have decided it’s a bit of both. I love color and I love picking fabrics for a quilt. In fact I think that’s one of my favorite parts of quilt making. I don’t really pull out a color wheel every time I make a quilt, but I also don’t just grab some fabrics and start sewing. Over the years I’ve gained some confidence in my color choices. You can too. Here are some color tips which I have learned.
Use the colors which the book or pattern has used.
At the fabric shop pick out a fabric which you love and then find some fabrics which coordinate with it.
If a sales person at the shop offers to help, give her suggestions about what you like. It’s okay to give her hints about your preferences.
Lay out the fabrics on an open table and step back to view them. Remove any that you particularly don’t like from your line of vision. Sometimes if they are in your view, they will confuse you.
Learn about color: There are many good books available on color, especially color in quilts. Color books will give you information on the color wheel, lightness and darkness, shades, tints, tones and hues. These are all important aspects of color, but perhaps the most important thing about color is the relationship between colors and the way each color reacts to another color. Your color sense will develop over time and experience and will be unique to you. Isn’t that wonderful!
If you’re not brand new at this, my advice is to go with what you feel looks best. The more you practice, the more confident you will become. Melinda Bula wrote in an article in American Quilter – “Artists feel color, and they are making color decisions 24/7 when they are painting a masterpiece or making a quilt.” So go with your color feelings – your intuition.
My intuition is to use many different fabrics in a quilt even if they’re all in the same color family. One fabric used over and over is rather boring to me. Each different fabric adds something to the whole piece. I feel the same about background fabrics and will often use several different backgrounds. I enjoy seeing each block after it is sewn, and I think variety adds to the final composition.
When making a quilt, the first fabric choices are dependent on the type of quilt and the inspiration. The quilt inspiration may be a picture, a card, a poem, a quilt, or a photograph I’ve seen. Often inspiration comes from nature so personal photographs are a wonderful source of good color choices.
Gather your fabrics. Either shop in your stash or at the local quilt shop to choose a few main colors. After picking the main colors, I add more from my fabric stash. At this time I might use a color wheel especially to find different shades or tints of a certain color. I lay them all out on a table and fold them to see the same amount of color as I plan to use in the quilt. I add and subtract for several hours sometimes. I remove colors which stand out too much or just don’t go with the others.
It’s important to have lights, mediums, and darks. It is often said that color gets all the credit while value does all the work. That is so true! Every quilt needs a few lights to shine and darks to fall away so that the mediums can come out to play. When I think I have a good mix of fabrics I put them together in a box. This is still more fabrics than I need and usually lots more than I will use. I put the box away for a day or two. Later I will revisit my project box and look over the color choices again. I may add or delete fabrics again.
When I think I’m ready to start cutting and sewing I start with only 1 block or one area of the quilt. My motto is – It’s important to always keep your options open. Therefore I never cut out an entire quilt until I’ve made a few sample blocks.
Make a block or a few blocks. This is a good way to also check your cutting measurements and to make sure the block finishes at the right size. Put your blocks on a design wall and step back across the room. Squint or use a peephole viewer to help get a better view from a distance. If there is not enough contrast, it will show up here. As you’re sewing a block you can see the distinct differences in fabrics, but across the room they often blend together. They still may look nice but there’s no ‘pop’.
Sometimes colors can surprise us when we put them together. Several years ago I made an autumn leaves quilt from a pattern in a Judy Martin book. My first sample block included some brown fabrics. Here it is. It looked fine.
The next sample blocks used no brown fabrics. I soon decided that the quilt was much prettier without any brown fabrics at all (except the stems). When I think of fall, I often think brown, but I found the quilt was much prettier with reds, oranges, yellows, and purples, and no brown. I was pleasantly surprised, and I love the finished quilt.
In the past few weeks. I have been using an old Presto Avenue Designs pattern to make a Christmas quilt. The first 3 blocks I finished looked fine. However when I stepped across the room, I thought, ‘There’s nothing really popping in this so far.’ So I decided to add a bit of gold or yellow to some of the stars to give the blocks a spot of something different. Now I like it better.
I will keep my options open as I work through the entire making of the quilt. I hate to have to rip out seams, therefore I cut fabric as I need it to make only 5 or 6 blocks at a time. This way I don’t end up with too much extra cut fabric if I change my mind. I don’t sew the blocks into rows or groups until all the blocks are made. I want to be able to move them around on the design wall until I’m happy with the color placement. In the same way I keep my options open for the border choices.
I love color! I love very colorful quilts, and I think anyone can make a beautiful quilt. I hope this will help you as you make your next colorful quilt.