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Choosing Fabric

Look at the two blocks below. They have similar patterns and similar colors, but I find one to be much more interesting and appealing than the other. Why?

pink start block

pink star block

How do you select the fabrics, organic or not organic, scraps or new, that you use in your quilts? Until a few years ago, I just bought colors and prints that I liked. Now I try to go about it a bit more systematically, selecting fabrics with as much variety and contrast as possible from each other. Having a variety of fabrics in a quilt can create a sense of movement and draws the viewer in to look more closely.

Strategies To Get More Variety and Contrast in Your Fabrics

Here are several ways to think about variety in fabrics, beginning with an obvious one – color.

Color

Color Wheel made with fabric scraps

I recently watched a slidecast online from “Quilts and Creativity” called Making A Quilter's Color Wheel. After watching it, I made my own color wheel, pictured above. I modified Maria Paelger’s instructions to include a light, dark and medium fabric for each color. This was a very useful exercise! As I went through my stash of scraps to make my color wheel, it was easy to see which colors I don’t tend to buy. I had lots of blues, violets, blue greens and yellow greens. I had very little blue violets and very little true green. On the other side of the wheel I was surprised at how few yellows I had. I also didn’t have very much yellow orange or red orange, but plenty of reds, and red violets. Now I know what colors to watch for when I am buying fabrics or hunting at second hand stores.

There are simple ways to select colors from different places of the color wheel that will help to create very vibrant and dynamic quilts. You can find more information here: http://quilting.about.com/od/colorfabrics/ss/color_quilts.htm

An example:

Here is a star block made with colors that are all near each other on the color wheel.

green star block

Here is another star block, which has green, along with violet and yellow, colors which are opposite on the color wheel. It is much more dynamic!

bright green star block

Value

Value refers to how light or dark a fabric is. You can get more contrast, interest and movement in your quilt by using fabrics with different values. An easy way to begin to explore value it to take swatches of fabrics of all different colors and arrange them in to three piles: light colors, medium colors and dark colors. Imagine that you made a quilt using only lights or only darks. It would have a very different feel from one made using a mix of lights and darks.

Here are is a group of purple fabric squares arranged from light on the left to dark on the right.

purple swatches arranged by value

To get a better idea of how different the color values are, particularly of the two middle columns, let’s look at the same fabrics in B&W.

purple swatches in BW

Using a black and white photo adjustment on your computer or a quilting color filter (it looks like a red piece of see through plastic) are both a good ways to determine if the fabrics you have selected for a project have enough contrast.

Beyond Color – How Else Can We Variety and Contrast in Fabics?

Scale

Scale refers to the size of the print on the fabric. Generally, you can probably divide your stash into small, medium and large scale. The photo below shows a small scale floral fabric on the left, a medium scale print on in the middle and a large scale floral on the right.

3 floral fabrics with different scale of print

Using fabrics of different scales in the same quilt creates interest and movement. Remember the pink star blocks from above?

This block uses all small scale fabrics (that almost read as solids):

pink star block

This one uses the same colors and color values, but has small and medium scale fabrics and it is much more visually interesting, isn’t it?

pink star block

Do you tend to buy prints of only one scale? You can add interest to your quilts by stepping outside of your box and using different scales.

Density

Prints can vary in density as well as scale:

fabrics with prints of different densities

All of the fabrics above are small scale prints, but they vary in density. For example the red print in the top middle row, has a low density design and the green next to it has a high density.

Let’s look at some more blocks, keeping density in mind:

cross block photo

cross block 2

cross block 3

These three blocks are all the same pattern, but they all look very different. The pink at the bottom makes great use of fabrics with different value and scale. The top block uses small and medium scale fabrics, but mostly of the same value so it is not as dynamic as the other two. The blue one in the middle uses small and large scale fabrics and fabrics of different density.

These simple nine patch blocks from an antique quilt are interesting to explore:

The one below uses two prints that are identical except for color:

nine patch block

Notice how much more movement and contrast you see with the next two nine patches.

nine patch block

ninpatch block

Putting It All Together

The three blocks below are all the same pattern, but they look completely different from each other because of the fabrics use.

The block below emphasizes the middle square by pairing two large scale fabrics there. The eye is also drawn to the dark blue triangles which contrast with the adjacent white print triangles in scale and value.

spiral block 1

In this version of the same block (below), the eye sees a large pink square on point and a hint of a pinwheel. This is because the center square is made up of fabrics with different value and scale.

spiral 2

Here is one last block made from the same pattern. In this block all the light value fabrics are in the middle and the dark ones on the outside creating a sense of a square within a square.

spiral 3

The next pair of blocks are interesting. The block below uses a light, cream fabric, next to a dark large scale fabric on the outside and dark fabrics on the inside, giving an overall appearance of a star block.

star block

Here is the same block made with a light fabric on the outside and two very similar medium value prints in the middle with lighter, large scale prints in the middle. The over all look of this is a cross instead of a star.

star block

So you've now got several ways to think about selecting and using a wider variety of fabrics: color, value, scale and density. Have fun!

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