How to choose fabrics for the Mysteries Down Under quilt

First of all I’d like to thank everyone who has subscribed so far to my first mystery quilt that starts on 19 August.

Some of you wanted to know how to choose the fabrics for this quilt.

The list I provided with yardage a few days ago is only indicative.

To design the quilt I picked a colour scheme -below- because I knew some of you like to make quilts with coordinated fabrics.

I prefer my quilts scrappy and that’s how I’ll be doing my tutorials.

I won’t use the palette on my videos but I will provide a drawing of each block with the palette below on my blog.

The fabrics belong to the solids Bella collection by Moda. The colours are Mustard, Strawberry, Porcelain, Aqua, 30’s blue, Admiral blue, Royal, Boysenberry, Sprout, Teal and then there’s Essex Yarn Dyed by Robert Kaufman.

An alternative palette using batiks could be:

Or just choose your own.

One of my favourite colour tools is Adobe Color. In this application you can create your colour scheme from scratch or upload an image you like and get a colour scheme based on the image colours. It’s a lot of fun to play with it!

How to choose fabric for your quilts with confidence

Choosing fabrics from my stash is almost the most enjoyable part of designing a quilt.

There’re many ways to choose fabrics that will go well together but let’s just focus on the 2 simplest ways to find matching fabrics.

1. Use fabrics from one single fabric collection

Usually fabrics in the same collection go well together.

2. Using the fabric colour palette

Another easy way to choose fabrics for a quilt is to use the coloured circles that are printed on the selvage. Those coloured circles are the palette for that fabric.

Use the palette to choose the rest of the fabrics that’ll will go well together.

Get a busy print for instance and then match the other fabrics around it.

To match the secondary fabrics try to use tone on tone, solids or less busy fabric. This will ensure that the match is more harmonious.

You have 2 examples below showing the main fabric and secondary fabrics based on the palette for the main fabric. See how I matched the colours in the circles to the major tone of the secondary fabric.

As you can see, it’s a lot easier to match fabrics when you choose one busy fabric and then a secondary fabric with one, two or 3 colours.

If your fabric doesn’t have a colour palette on the selvage, you can still match it by finding the palette yourself.

What about the background fabric?

The majority of the quilts I make have a unifying background fabric.

My favourite colours for the background fabric are whites and creams.

The reason I like whites and creams best is that they add “breathing space” to the quilt as well as making the design pop up.

I hope you enjoy making the quilt!

How to follow my blog

If you don’t want to miss any tutorial that makes this quilt, your best bet is to follow my blog so you receive an email in your inbox when the next tutorial is out.

This video demonstrates how to follow or subscribe to my blog:

New book out on December 3

“Turnabout Patchwork. Simple quilts with a twist” is all about playing with blocks – making a block, slicing it up, and turning or repositioning the pieces to make a completely different block (sometimes two smaller blocks) to yield endless quilt tops.

You can preorder on Amazon now.

Stay tuned for more!

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