Let’s start with the most intimidating part of starting a new quilt project – color selection. If you are not working from a kit, where the fabric selections have been packaged for you, then you are faced with making these selections for yourself. This is both the beauty of creating and the most paralyzing if you are not bold in the fabric selection. Fabulous fabric selection and placement can create an optical illusion that can multiply the beauty of a quilt and poor fabric selection can make a well pieced and quilted project appear mediocre. So where to start?
The first quilts I made were completely scrap quilts out of hand-me-down fabrics and left overs from craft projects. Big plus side is there is no wrong way to scrap, there is little to no investment monetarily, and most importantly, experimenting to learn color selection. Yes, experiment! Put colors and patterns together and look at it. Complimentary, contrast, solid, stripe, floral, graphic print all play together differently. Look at it from 18″, through the sewing machine, look at it from 4′ standing over it, look at it from 10′ away. It is important to take into consideration the perspectives and decide what you like. Self awareness will help make the quilt reflect what you are wanting to express.
You either just found that completely liberating or recoiled and want there to be a formula for fabric selection. If you are repulsed by the thought of experimentation, there is great news! Very talented artist over the years have documented and studied how we perceive color, pattern and scale. Following a few rules (that are meant to be bent and occasionally broken) the guess work of color and fabric selections has been narrowed.
Over the next several posts we are going to discuss each of these rules at length. Disclaimer, I am not a trained artist, I have not professionally studied color theory, I am not the leading expert on all things fabric selection but I am learning and want to share this with you to hopefully make diving into that project less intimidating and that trip to the fabric store or stash more productive. Thank you for spending some time with us in the Pig Pen at This Lil Pig Studios!
This Lil Pig Studios 