Choosing fabric and machine binding video tutorial – Quilting in 2021

As part of the series Quilting in 2021, today’s tutorial focuses on the very start of a project, choosing fabrics, and the finishing of a quilt: binding by machine.

Choosing fabrics is one of the things I like most about quilting.

I’ll share some of the ways I go about choosing my fabrics for any particular project.

There’re many ways to choose fabrics that will go well together but let’s just focus on 3 simple ways to find matching fabrics.

To recap:

1. Use fabrics from one single fabric collection

Usually fabrics in the same collection go well together.

2. Using the fabric colour palette

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.

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.

Black is another good background colour that achieves similar effects to using white or creams.

Applications that help you select a colour scheme

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!

Still can’t decide on a fabric collection?

Some of my favourite designers are Heather Bailey, Bonnie and Camille, Valori Wells,  Jocelyn Proust, just from the top of my head.

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My book and other publications

You can now purchase individual chapters from my book as bundles of 4 unique quilt patterns.

If you prefer to own the complete book, Turnabout Patchwork, please note it is currently out of print. However, you might still be fortunate enough to find a copy on Amazon.

Explore all the quilts from the book in real-life projects!