Mondays with Mara (let’s talk about color selections)

Good Monday morning friends and happy Labor Day to all in US!

Yes, we are turning the corner and I can see the fall coming… Crisp mornings, colors changing, bountiful harvest at the Farmer’s market – it all brings the season change and to me that is somehow very comforting, how about you?

Not to mention – COLOR!!! If autumn has anything to offer to us quilters, it is color inspiration!! I am specially grateful for amazing colors of autumn here in western NY – it is just glorious!

So let’s talk about color for our projects.

I can safely say that that was the most asked question when I was teaching quilting – how do you pick colors for your quilts? And of course, there is NO one perfect answer and no fixed recipes for that, as color is so very personal. However! That doesn’t mean you are completely on your own, left wondering and second-guessing yourself! There are ways and some little tricks to help you with your color choices!

Of course, lets just say here, at the beginning, that today in the world of fabric collections, that is one easy-peasy way to have a good set of fabric – just get a collection!! But that is not always what we want to do, or what we have available or – not as much fun?

Since this topic can take volumes of writing and books have been written of course, and I am definitely NOT the expert by any means, today I just want to talk about ONE of the easy ways to do it , using what you have already – your fabric!

Most of us gravitate towards a beautiful, multicolor print when it comes to fabric. We all buy them, hoard them… you know what I mean. Even when we do look at fabric collections, it is usually few main, featured prints (florals, geometrics…etc), that grab our attention and sometimes that is all we buy too.

So use that beloved print as your guide to pick all other colors for your project! (I know this is not a new idea of course, but bear with me – I do have a few tips for you!)

Here is one example: Many years ago (and this was kinda before collections were all over the market, so we quilters were on our own!) I decided I want to make a quilt with fall colors and on the dark background. That was my starting point. As I wondered around the quilt shop, I saw this beautiful print and thought this was IT!! It had exactly what I envisioned in colors!

Mind you, initially I did NOT want to actually use the print in my project, I wanted just solid-looking fabrics… So I just looked at the colors of the print and went hunting for those colors! These were the colors I picked:

One surprise here and something that opened my eyes a bit more was that there was PURPLE in this print! Somehow then I did not think of purple as a color of fall at the time but seeing it in there – it made so much sense! So sometimes when you look closely into ALL the colors of your beloved fabric print, you learn new things! 🙂

Eventually, as I designed this fall quilt (it was actually a class sample I designed to teach different techniques/blocks), I ended up using this print too, and I think it all worked out well – what do you think?

Another little tip I have for you is about background fabric in your quilt. If you are using a multicolor print as your guide to choose other colors, the easiest way to choose background color is to look at the background color of the print itself. In my case, black was an easy and obvious choice. Same would be if the background of this print was a light color (like white or cream). This is not always a solution but it does work often.

So this is the whole quilt – Colors of October. I made this quilt in 2003!! (as the label says) Wow, time does fly my friends! I have many great memories about designing and making this quilt, and teaching it too, many, many times in my local quilt shop. While it was made many years ago and my style maybe changed a bit, and (I would like to hope!) I learned so much more – I still really love this quilt, its design and colors too. What do you think? Should I maybe make a pattern for it? (this idea literally just came to my head as I type this!! ). Or – it would be a great Quilt-a-long? There are many cool techniques involved in this quilt that quilters could learn… Bow Tie blocks are made in a very cool way, stars in the corners don’t have points to match, free-hand gentle curves….

But I completely digress…. sorry!

Here is another example of how I worked from a favorite print to build a set of colors:

This amazing floral from Sharon Holland’s Spirited collection is just so so beautiful and inspiring and I knew I want it in my quilt!

This time I am making a specific pattern that calls for specific number of colors and this print WILL be a part of it (not just a color inspiration/guide). Below is a little visual of how I looked at colors and which ones I wanted to pull from the print. (yellow arrows on the left point at colors I was trying to focus on)

The trick I learned during the years is to look at EVERY color in the print, no matter how little it is in the overall print – by focusing on these small (but often bright and brilliant!) areas of color and adding that color to your palette – somehow the magic happens!!

I also find that having the color card of your favorite solids helps A LOT when planning your colors – even if you will not actually use solids in the quilt. I use my AGF Pure Solids card all the time!

In this case, I loved this emerald green color (it is AGF Pure Solids PE-463 Zambia Stone), even though it might not be the first color you notice in this print, right? I actually loved it so much that I decided it will be the BACKGROUND in my quilt! Yes, yes…a little unexpected and maybe somewhat crazy – enough so that I hesitated and second-guessed myself for while…

But here is the trick that I think is very important when you try to visualize colors/fabrics in your quilt: when you place fabrics together to look at them, don’t just look at them in a neat pile like this:

Try to spread fabrics around to see approximately the amount of fabrics that you will see in the quilt. In other words, spread the presumed background fabric to see as much as you will in the quilt, fold other fabric into pieces approximately the size of what you will see in the quilt and then look at it.

So after looking at this set-up above, yes, there is a lot of the green here, but I still like it a lot. What do you think? Looks good? Crazy choice? 🙂

Well my friends, I decided to go for it and went ahead to cut all my pieces – I am in love now!!!

Of course, for all this visualizing of colors in your future quilt, there is good technology too – like Electric Quilt software or any other graphic software you might like. EQ is easy to use and very practical and I do use it a lot, but many of you might not want to, or don’t have time or …simply need a “on-site” decision when you are shopping and piling fabrics in the quilt shop. I encourage you to always do the “proportional amounts” visual like I showed you above (OK, I just made up this name…), because it does make a difference!

There is so so many more ways to combine colors and decide on fabrics you want to use, this was just one small part of it all. We can definitely talk about it some more in another blog post or any other media – email me or tag me on Instagram ( @mvquilts ) or Facebook ( Mara Quilt Designs ) with all your color choices and questions, I would LOVE to chat about it!!

That is all from me for this Monday my friends – hope you have a wonderful one, full of color and inspiration of any kind! Until next time,

Love,

Marija