Choosing Quilt Colors: Tips and Techniques

My favorite part of making a quilt is the search for the fabric. It's the hunt it's fun. There's colors out there. And I love to go in the fabric store and play and put them together like Legos or Lincoln logs just grab fabrics and see what goes and make a creation and then say oops, if I use this it could be something entirely different. I just love the fabrics and the colors.

But for a lot of people, it's very intimidating. They worry that the colors aren't gonna go together. They don't know how to put colors together. So I wanna give you a few tips to take that stress away and make it easier for you. The first tip I have is take your cues from nature.

Look around us, the sky is blue, the grass is green, the dirt is brown and it all works together beautifully. God makes gorgeous flowers in every shade of the rainbow and they all look beautiful out in a field as you look across the field of wild flowers you go wow, that's gorgeous. Same thing with your quilt. If it's in nature, it's probably going to work. Stroll through the floral aisle at your favorite grocery store for a few minutes, take some pictures of the bouquets.

The bouquets are gorgeous and they put a lot of different colors together and they work. Those can be inspiration points for your quilts. Another favorite place of mine is The Home Depot, The Lowe's, the big stores with paint. Look at these paint chips. My husband just grabbed a few for me 'cause he knew I was doing this video and I said, pick up some paint chips.

That wasn't quite what I was after but they actually, as you look at them they can all work in different ways. This was a little more what I was after because I want you to see not just the different colors but the different shades, the hues. The difference between the top one and the bottom one in hue or tint if you will, is the intensity. And we changed the intensity by adding white to go lighter in your paint color or adding black to get the more darker intensity. As you look at the paints as you stand there, they all look beautiful and it's hard to choose.

So go in and look at the paints and maybe you'll get some inspiration for either a quilt in one or multiple colors. One color quilts can be beautiful but I want you to keep this in mind again, the shading is the ticket here from dark to light light to dark it doesn't matter. It's the intensity of the color that is going to make the difference in your quilt. If you think your quilts are looking a little flat, a little muddled, try adding the black or white. As you put black or white next to the color, it really pops it.

Even these colors here, you add the black or white and you start seeing more intensity out of your colors. It just makes a beautiful palette to highlight your colors and sometimes all it takes is just a little bit of black and white to change the look of your quilt. Let's talk fat quarters. Everybody loves to go in and buy a kit. Everybody loves to get fat quarters because they're easy.

The manufacturer has already put the colors together for you and you know that they're all going to blend. This is true. And you get to have a lot of the different pieces of a collection when you buy the fat quarters as a bundle. The issue becomes they are all in the same tones as you look, it's all pretty much the same intensity. Yes, this would be considered your dark, this would be considered your lights.

and then you've got a little medium in here but they still have that same something. And that's why the quilt looks a little flat. What I recommend is popping it. Take a different collection the dye lots will be different. This is still orange, this is the same manufacturer but it's a different collection, a different fabric.

and now that orange looks entirely different. Just adding that one fabric will help pop your quilt. Use it in a block as one of the patches, use it as the sashing, use it for some binding it'll help pop. Throw in one that's got just a little bit darker shade, this is more of a red and it will help pop that quilt but it still works because the rest of the colors are in there. If I throw in this blue, it pops this blue because this is more toward the aqua side.

This is more toward the cornflower blue color and then it's got the Navy-ish in there but it starts popping and adding interest your eyes drawn to it because it's a little different. Same with the green, it's a little brighter. It's just that little touch different and in this case, it happens to be a print. This is from same manufacturer, different collection. If I go to an entirely different manufacturer the dyes are really going to be different.

So now when I bring in this from Northrop with the motor fabric, we start seeing a little bit more of a brighter shade of yellow in there or I can bring in this beautiful orange and yellow stripe that just has a little different intensity, a little different color, the same with oranges we've got a red orange, we've got orange orange and it just is adding a little interest. Go outside of the box, go to your stash, throw in a piece like this and you're really going to see a difference in your quilt. It's what makes it pop. And I think you'll find that you'll be very very happy with that. So to give you a good example of this, I brought a quilt top that I recently made sweet little baby quilt top and this was using a collection of flannel fabrics.

And as you can see, the tones are all the same. What pops this is I used a cotton fabric from a different manufacturer again and this little bit of aqua blue stripe in there to set off the borders is just a little bit brighter, a little bit lighter and then I used it as the center block in my log cabin blocks, and it just adds interest. And then when I do the binding, I'm going to do it in that. So just one fabric different from the main collection can make all the difference in the world. The other thing is don't be afraid of color.

My younger son, when I first started quilting wanted me to make a quilt for his new room. And he wanted it in the hockey team colors. That was fine, but he liked to hockey teams. He liked the Ottawa Senators whose colors were black, red and white. And he loved the Philadelphia Flyers who are orange and white.

And I'm like, Oh gosh that's gonna be horrible how am I gonna make those work? I'm glad I tried because it ended up being one of the prettiest quilts I ever made. This was one of the blocks and the quilt was this particular one it's the "Amish Quilt in a day "Variations Of Roman Stripe" by Eleanor Burns. And the quilt I made was this one and it's shown in the blues and the purples with the black. But when I did it in his colors with the orange and the red and then popped it with the black and the white in there and the other one that actually helped add interest was a pale gray.

This has been almost oh over 20 years ago I made this quilt. It is still today one of my favorites and yet it was totally out of my comfort zone. So don't be afraid of color go play with it. It's a lot of fun.