- So you want to make a quilt.
You've got all these patterns, you've got all these fabrics
and it should be easy just to put them together, right?
But when it comes time to cut your fabric,
you just can't do it.
You know something's wrong,
but you don't know how to fix it.
So here are seven mistakes that quilters make
when choosing fabric for their quilt
and the ways to fix them.
So stick with me and they'll show you how to do it.
(funk music)
- Hi there, I'm Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts.
I give you tips, tricks and strategies
to help you make the quilt that you want to make.
And I am getting so close to 150,000 subscribers.
I would really appreciate your support by clicking on
that subscribe button.
Quilters cut up pieces of fabric,
and then we sew it all back together again.
To make all that work worth it you need
to choose fabrics that work well together.
But how do you actually do it?
The front end of making a quilt is fairly brain intensive.
We get so many ideas, we see so many patterns,
we see so many fabrics
and they're swirling around in your head.
Now I'm not going to linger on this stage today.
That's for another video.
But at some point you make a decision
to move forward with a pattern.
And this is a shift
from the dreaming phase into the planning phase.
And this is where you choose the fabrics for your quilt.
And whether you like this phase, or you hate this phase,
you'll find it a lot less challenging,
if you avoid making these mistakes.
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When you buy a pattern, it comes with so much information.
Not only does it tell you how many fabrics to buy,
but it also tells you what quantity
and what shape the fabric should be in.
But most importantly, the pattern comes with a picture
of the quilt on top, which gives you a map
of where the darkest value should go
and where the lightest value should go.
And where are the areas of largest contrast.
And all you need to do is to take a black and white photo
to see where those values lie.
Now, I covered a lot of this step
in my colour theory series part four,
and there's a free handout sheet that you can download
from my website to deal with it.
And I covered this specifically
for the Meadowland Quilt in my vlog episode #3.
And if you're interested in seeing either those videos,
I'm going to put a link in the notes below.
(funk music)
Now, I know you're probably rolling your eyes and saying,
Karen's talking about colour theory again,
but this is why it's important.
You are going to be putting a lot of hours
and dollars into your quilt, and you want the whole thing
to look cohesive, and you have to make so many decisions
for fabric and value and saturation.
It is so much easier if you narrow it down
to your colour harmony right at the beginning,
and you can eliminate all those hues
from the thought process.
Now, where does this colour harmony come from?
You might want to follow the colour harmony
of the original pattern.
You might be making this for a particular person
and you want to choose their favourite colours.
But for most quilters, it comes from a fabric or fabrics.
And we use this as the jumping off point.
So it's time to get out your colour wheel.
And it's best to do this in daylight and near a window
because we want to identify the major colours in our fabric.
For my Meadowland quilt, I am using a fat quarter bundle.
My yellow is not quite a pure yellow,
but it's not quite a golden yellow,
but I'm going to choose to go with the golden yellow.
My orange is a red orange.
My green is actually a blue green
and my blue, which is a little bit difficult to tell
when it's this dark, but I've got a good light
and I'm going to go with true blue.
So this is my colour harmony.
And if you are just working with one colour,
what you do is you look on the back of the card
and you choose what colour harmony you want.
The choice is yours.
If you don't have one of these,
I'll put a link to it in the notes below.
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A beginner mistake is that we have a favourite colour
and then we go out and we buy that colour over
and over again, and exactly the same intensity in hue.
But when you make a quilt,
you need to have a range of saturations.
So you can choose a range from up here.
You can use it range from down here,
or you can choose a range from the whole card.
But the point is you have to choose a range.
Personally, I keep my fabric stored by colour one container
for each hue and each box has a copy
of the colour range associated with that hue.
These ranges are from my colour series,
part 3 on your Colour Zone.
You can download them from my website.
I'm going to pull box that corresponds
to each one of the four colours in my colour harmony.
For my Meadowland Quilt, I need 20 fat quarters.
My fat quarter bundle has 12, so I need eight more,
but I'm going to pull more than that
at least five in each colour,
so in the next stage I have choices.
I choose lighter ones, I choose darker ones,
I choose ones with different patterns.
(funk music)
Remember that first step when we took a look
at the values in your pattern,
well, this is where we're going to incorporate that.
Not all colours are equal in value,
yellows have the highest value, blues have the lowest.
So you might be in a situation
where you're choosing a dark yellow,
but in value it's still higher
than your lightest blue.
So this review can happen a variety
of ways based on what your pattern needs.
The simplest way is just lining them up
from lightest to darkest value.
When you take a black and white photo of your fabrics,
you're going to see whether there's an even gradual change
between the lightest to the darkest.
And have you got the whole range
that you intend to sew with covered.
You might recall in my Beginner Bargello quilt,
I had to introduce another blue is still in a gap in value.
If you do have it covered,
then you make your selection based on
what your pattern requires.
If you are making a log cabin,
you want a strong distinction possibly between the dark side
of the block and the light side of the block.
So you will be choosing from the darks and the lights,
but you may not be taking from the middle.
For my project, the Meadowland Quilt,
each block has three fabrics.
So what I'm doing is I'm dividing my fabrics
to light medium and dark values.
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So at this point we have qualified our fabric.
It is harmonic, we have chosen a range
of fabrics in the hues of that colour harmony.
We have a range of values and we want
to put them together in such a way
that we can see the contrast
and how they react with each other.
But quilters often fail to look
at their fabrics in the sizes
that the fabric will actually be cut to.
You can use templates,
you can simply fold the fabric into the size
that you need by laying your fabrics against each other.
You can ensure that you have the contrast that you require.
You're looking for that interplay between the fabrics
so that the patterns can hold up against each other.
You might also see some strong, directional elements
that you need to consider when you cut as well.
And that's why I have pulled more fabrics
than I finally need.
So I can make some choices here
if they're not working together.
And with this step, we are finally able
to make our final choices.
And now we're ready to cut, right?
We can cut now right?
[Now, the voices start in your head.]
[Maybe you should have used more blue.]
[Maybe I should have used the yellow instead of gold yellow.]
[Did I get enough Dark? Did I get enough Bright?]
[Do I have enough fabrics?]
[Maybe I should pull everything out and look at it again.]
[Maybe I should consider another pattern.]
[I really hate these colours.]
[I really want to start again.]
Which leads me to the last mistake that quilters make.
(funk music)
Taking that first cut into your fabric can feel
like jumping off a cliff freediving and let's face it.
Not all quilting decisions are equal,
and some people have a harder time
making decisions than others.
There's no judgement here,
that's just the way some people are,
but the longer you take to make that cut,
the more what ifs come in.
If I just stick it out one more day or another week,
another month, a better fabric will be available,
or another idea will come to me
and I'll make it even better.
That's a dark spiral that you can get into.
And it just leads to projects in bags,
in your cupboard and bigger and bigger fabric stashes.
If you want to move forward,
you have to trust in the design.
It's why you're making the quilt to begin with.
If you've looked at your pattern and you've done the work,
you've done the colour harmony, you've got the saturation,
You've made the values,
you've seen the way the fabrics play against each other,
you're ready.
Now I'm not trying to imply
that you make all these decisions in one hour,
one week or even a month.
You make the decisions at the rate
that you feel comfortable, but once you made the last one,
give yourself a time limit.
And when the time limits up,
you need to grab your big quilter scissors,
take a deep breath and cut.
I'll be honest the colours
that I chose for my Meadowland Quilt are
so out of my colour zone that I had to repeat
over and over again to myself while I was making it,
trust in the design, trust in the design,
trust in the design, and you know what?
It worked out of 20 blocks, I am so happy with 19 of them.
I knew this one fabric was going to be problematic,
but I made the decision to keep it in there
because it was part of the fat quarter bundle.
They work up close,
(funk music)
they work from across the room
and they especially look good altogether.
I couldn't be more pleased.
(funk music)
And what if you don't like the results,
then you learn from it.
I remember watching an interview with Tula Pink
when I first started quilting.
And she said that with every fabric collection,
she learns how her designs work together
and how fabrics interplay.
And it's a journey, the more we do the better we get at it.
So I hope this video helps you make better fabric decisions.
And remember you can download any of those handouts
from my website, Just Get It Done Quits.
And I will link those videos I referenced right over here.
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