Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Picking out prism fabric

Remember the Patchwork Prism quilt along that I mentioned last week? It's in the fabric choosing phase right now and that is the absolute hardest part of quilting for me. I know what I like when I see it, but for some reason, putting colors together just confuses me. Typically, I find a picture that I like - either a photograph or art work, or sometimes even a magazine spread - and pick out the major colors from that to help me choose my fabrics. That isn't really cheating, since I am still picking out fabrics "from scratch" and not just buying a collection that I know goes together. But if you ask me to throw together fabrics for a quilt without a reference, well, I get a little stumped.

When I saw this quilt, my first thought was to copy it. That's what I do a lot of the time. I mean, I see a quilt I like, and I like it. I like everything about it. Why would I want to change it? But I am trying to branch out a bit, be a little more creative. I have lived near the water most of my life (except for the 7 years I spent land locked in the high desert of New Mexico. But we won't talk about that.) and I've always loved all things nautical. I especially love sea glass and I've always wanted to try to make a quilt using the colors of the sea. So I thought, why not make a sea glass quilt?

Alright, so here's what I pulled for the quilt. I'm trying to use as much from the stash as possible, but I did buy some fat quarters to fill in.


Here are the darks, for the very center.


Then the mid blues, with some light blues for the accent hexes.


Here are my teals. I'm a little light on these, and most of them are from a quilt that I cut for but never made. I'm hoping I can make them work.


My greens.


My aquas. I had plenty of these!


My sands.


And a dark brown for the corners.

I'm liking everything together, we'll just have to cut it up and see how it looks in the pattern!

2 comments:

  1. So when should I be expecting this? Seriously, though, I really love your fabric choices and look forward to seeing the final product!

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