Choosing Fabrics for Patchwork

Choosing fabrics for patchwork can be a daunting task.  There are so many colors and prints available;  it's hard to know where to start and when to finish.  Here's a trick to make a foolproof fabric palette.


Fabric designers are paid to come up with fresh, fashionable designs in a wide variety of styles and colors.  If you hired a designer to choose your fabrics, you'd pay a fortune.  But there's a sneaky way to pick their brains for free!  Walk through the fabric store, and find a multi-colored print you just love.  I chose this unusual stylized floral.

 

Now, choose fabrics that are the colors that the designer used. Look in your stash, as well, for colors that match the designers.  Here are the colors that I found in this print:

Now, here's the trick--assemble the palette with colors in the same proportions that the designer uses.  In our sample print, there's a lot of off-white background, a lot of yellow and orange, and just a bit of turquoise.  Lay out your fabrics so that you can see the right proportion of each color to the feature fabric.

I never would have chosen these colors to work with on my own, but as you see, they work really well together.  Now,  put the feature fabric back on the shelf and you can get to work with an exceptional fabric palette.  To add more interest, find more fabrics in these colors to use throughout your quilt.  Thanks, fabric designer!  I'll find a pattern I like, use these colors in this proportion, and perhaps sneak in a bit of the feature fabric as an accent.  Remember to mix print scale and style to keep your quilt vibrant with visual texture and movement.