Selecting and Placing Colors and Fabrics for Scrap Type Quilts, Part 1

We had a huge response to my quilt, Day Lilies, when we placed it at the top of our Facebook page. There were many requests for a pattern and kit to make it. There is a pattern available. It is in my book Quiltmaking By Hand, along with several other patterns. But I will tell you why there is no kit and give you hints on how to plan color schemes for any “scrappy” quilt.

 

 

First and foremost, I used more than 120 different fabrics in Day Lilies and most other scrappy type quilts I have made. It would be impossible to make kits with that many fabrics and have them at an affordable price. Furthermore, some people want to know the placement of each and every fabric. It is better to understand how to do it than to try to copy something exactly.

Selecting the Colors

Why so many fabrics in Day Lilies, for example? The base design is a hexagon which means that If you look carefully at the quilt you will see that there are three colors of lilies—reds, browns and purples. Because of the hexagonal arrangement, the lilies are arranged so that no two flowers of the same color touch, thus the three colors.

 

 

Now, a closer look reveals that each lily is made up of six petals and each petal has seven pieces. Those pieces are shaded light to dark.

Even if you used exactly the same fabric in each petal of a color you would need 21 different fabrics—seven reds, seven purples and seven browns.

 

 

Then you would have “spotlights” of colors without any blending or variance of the pieces once they are assembled.

A closer look at my quilt shows that within any one flower each petal is different. Sometimes a red petal might shade into a hint of brown or purple, or a purple might shade into a hint of red and so forth. This achieves a better blending of the colors in the final quilt.

 

 

So how do you select the colors in the first place? Rather than repeat myself and write it all here again, I urge you to watch the two following videos which explain my basic philosophy of color and how I put fabrics together. Go to the “Tips and Lessons” page of my website and choose “Design and Color.”  Then watch these two videos:

• “Jinny’s Color Secrets”
• “Choosing Quilt Colors with the Portable Palette”

Now try these steps in selecting a palette of colors for your scrap quilt.

• Select the colors you would like to use and have several values of those colors ranging from light to dark.
• Add whatever additional colors you need to shade those colors together.
• Make sure you have a “deep dark” fabric, an “accent” and several neutrals.

If you are uncertain where to begin, take a look at the pre-cut section of our web site.

https://jinnybeyer.com/product-category/fabric/pre-cuts/

There you will find several bundles of 30 or more color coordinated fabrics that are shaded together.  Find one that appeals to you and once you have those fabrics, go to your stash and pull out any fabrics within that color range, the more the better.  Here are some that I recommend:

• Desert Dawn
• Emerald Isle
• Indian Marketplace
• Moon Glow
• Protea
• Rainbows End
• Urban Sunset
• Zinnias

Indian Marketplace is a good start if you like the colors in Day Lilies. Urban Sunset is the one I used for the Urban Sunset quilt.

 

 

Take some time to look through your fabrics and make selections.  Next week, I will talk about placing those fabrics in the quilt.