Picking fabrics!

One of my favourite parts about starting a new project is selecting the fabric. I used to like to use fabrics from the same line or designer so that everything would just "go" but a year or so back, I wanted to get away from that and start combining a wide variety of fabrics in my projects. I am going to Portland next week to attend Quiltmaker's Block Party event and I have been getting myself organized for the various classes I will be taking. As it happens, my daughter would like me to make a quilt for a friend of hers who is getting married next year. Okay, really, it's more like "do you want me to make Mady a quilt?" because seriously, I'm always looking for a reason to make another project! Anyway, my daughter happily agreed and through some skillful surveillance (aka texting her friend) she determined her friend likes green and purple as a colour scheme. How fortuitous that Pink Castle's January Stash Stack Club had been purple, so I had a great stash on hand to select from. My project calls for 25 fat quarters and as it happened, I had fat quarter of a green and purple Michael Miller print to inspire me and in about ten minutes time, I had a nice stash of fabric ready to go.

The inspiration print is visible along the top of the photo, peeking out from under the fat quarters. I am quite happy with this stack; there are a couple of repeats (Oval Elements and Quilter's Linen) but other than that, the variety looks good to me.

One of the tricks I used to help in the fabric selection was to reference the coloured dots printed on the selvedge. This is a great tip I picked up from Jeni in her Art of Choosing series and I use it frequently. Here is a closeup of the dots:

You will notice there is no grey in the print itself; I was a couple fabrics short and decided to throw in a couple of neutrals. I like how the grey fabrics look with this palette. They look like spring, don't they? Good! Because I hear we're going to have snow again tomorrow so a little bit of spring colour in the sewing room is most welcome. All I have to do now is start cutting them up for class!

Chat soon.

e.