Color and Contrast

by Steffani McChesney

No matter how long you have been quilting, choosing fabric is the hardest part of starting a new project. It is also the most fun for me, but it hasn’t always been that way. For example, one of the first quilts I ever made was a log cabin lap quilt. I picked out lots of beautiful solid fabric with lovely colors. The only problem was that they were all in the same value range so there was no contrast. This quilt was so boring that I even won a prize in an ugly quilt contest. Talk about a confidence inhibitor. For years I made only blue, white, and black quilts. What a rut. They are great looking quilts, but there are thousands of beautiful fabrics in thousands of colors just waiting to be used. So…several color classes and lots of experimentation later I now have more confidence in my fabric choices. Here are some of the tricks I use to create a quilt using color and contrast.

First of all, I use a lot of black. I know this isn’t for everyone, but a little (or in my case, a lot of) black makes all your other color choices really pop. Lots of contrast, and black goes with everything. Interior decorators have been putting a touch of black in their rooms for years to give them a little visual pick-me-up.

Of course, color creates contrast too. Just be sure that you choose dark, light and medium colored fabrics for each quilt for the contrast you need. You can use a red or green clear plastic viewer, which obscures the colors and lets you see just the values (lightness or darkness) of the fabrics. These handy gadgets are available at quilt shops. Or you can take your color choices to a black and white copy machine and make a copy of all the fabrics to see their relative values instantly because there is no color to confuse you. You can also step back and squint your eyes to view the fabric. Not too attractive, but effective.

Contrast is not only created by the colors you choose, it is also created by the size and texture of the prints in the fabrics. Large, busy prints will contrast strongly with small prints or textured prints such as marbles, batiks, and tone-on-tones.

There are two more down and dirty ways to choose fabrics for your quilt that are virtually foolproof, and fun too. As you walk through the quilt shop look at all the bundles of fat quarters. If one really calls out to you, use it as the basis of your color and fabric choices. Just match prints and colors to the fabrics in the fat quarter bundle.

Last but, not least, is one of my favorite ways to pick fabrics. I like to find a flashy, multi-colored focus fabric with those color dots printed in the selvedge. Usually, the fabric already has good color contrast so just use the dots as the guide to pick your fabrics.

Don’t forget that fabrics do not have to match perfectly. In fact, if you get too obsessive about trying to match colors you will lose the spontaneity to make your quilt come alive. I guess the bottom line is just to have fun and make beautiful quilts.