One of the hardest things for me in quilting is choosing fabric colors.
This is true even when I know what the pattern is, but it's especially true when it's a mystery quilt/bom program. I've pulled some bolts of fabrics off the shelves of my local quilt shop (LQS) Graceful Marylin Quilt Shoppe to show how I find my color combinations.
Quilt kits already chosen for you are great ways to buy fabric knowing you are going to get a beautiful quilt, but with mystery quilts that isn't possible. Usually you are told a value (light, medium, dark) and a yardage amount. So how do you know what will work well together? Black and white photos.
Looking at bolts of fabric can get overwhelming, and sometimes it's hard to know which fabric is which value.
For instance I would have said the lighter brown (third from the right) reads medium, but when turned to black and white you can see it reads as a dark. Perhaps that is something you could use as a medium in a pattern you already know, but in a mystery quilt it might get lost and then you might lose the design.
Let's look at another grouping. Here I've chosen what I believe to be light, medium and dark.
However, when I switch it to black and white the fabric I chose as my medium definitely reads light.
Another fabric pull.
While the colors may be a bit different I wanted to show what a black and white photo looks like when you have reached light, medium and dark. There is a difference in value of each one, even if it's just a little bit.
You can also use this trick if you wanted to do a scrappy version and needed to pick out multiple fabrics with the same value.
From this you can pick out the fabrics that read light, medium or dark.
Now I need to go fabric shopping! What are your favorite tips for picking out fabrics for a mystery quilt? Let me know in the comments!
Make something Extraordinary!
Jen
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Thank you for this helpful article and your visuals helped to explain. I appreciated that as well.
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