RS Quilt fabric choices

For those of you who have never sewn I thought I'd do a little lost on choosing fabric. This is overwhelming to some people. For this quilt I am going to do mine out of fabric that I already have. The blocks I showed in the previous post were made from fabric I had left over from other quilts. I did decide to use all fabric 1930's style. This is a good quilt to make with scraps as we are going to be working on it all year long. That way you don't have to worry about running out of a certain fabric. Here are some other examples of scrappy quilts I made in the past. This one is made of 1930's fabric. Each butterfly is different. This quilt is made of Civil War reproduction fabrics. Each basket is a different pattern and made from different fabric. I don't think any piece of fabric was used more than once.

When you get to the fabric store the newer lines of fabric will be near displayed together. Using fabric from the same line is a good way to make sure all your fabrics coordinate. In this case, where I can't tell you how much fabric to buy I don't know this is what you want to do. You could end up with not enough fabric and have it sold out in the store or you could have way too much making the cost of the quilt more expensive. Here are some quilts I've made using small pieces from a whole line.

This one is from the Cotton Blossoms.

This one uses the fabric from Dandelion Girl by Fig Tree Quilts.

If you want to choose all your own fabric I would suggest choosing a fabric with a print that has several colors that you love. You can pick it to match the room where the quilt will go or use your favorite colors. You will make sure all your fabrics coordinate with this fabric. For example:

When this fabric was chosen it was for a block swap with friends. We each made blocks and chose this fabric to use as the central fabric. We could choose any fabric that coordinated with this one. In addition to the brown we used fabrics in the red, green and blue. Most people used cream as a background color.

This is the finished quilt. The main fabric was used in the outer border.

This piece was used in one that I will hopefully get quilted and bound in the next few days. If you were using this fabric as your central piece in addition to other oranges you could use the teal, green, brown and white colors to find fabrics that coordinate. I will post the quilt to this in the next few days so stay tuned!

Now you know a little bit about choosing fabric. If you need help feel free to give me a call. Remember, the first class is Wednesday February 18 at 7pm at the church!