Color Coordinated
Colors can literally make ALL the difference when putting together a quilt. There is never a wrong answer, which is what makes it fun! I wanted to share about the making of my Crazy Star quilt and this is a great quilt example for color choices.
I finished this quilt up about a year ago. I had done the pattern previously and had such a good time making it. I found these Batik fabrics and knew it was time to do it again!
The first time I made this quilt I was in grade school, so it definitely counts as a user friendly pattern. This pattern is from a book by Buggy Barn that is all about the stack and shuffle method. This particular pattern has 20 different fabrics in it.
So here comes the fun part! All you do is stack up 10 of your fabrics in one pile and 10 in the other. You then take your pattern and trace it onto freezer paper. Why freezer paper? Because you can literally iron it onto your fabric wax side down and it will temporarily stick on so you don't risk sliding around while you cut.
So once everything is cut, you shuffle. This is how you get the 3 different colors in every block. You pull 1 layer of fabric from the inside star and put it on the bottom and then you take 2 of each of the middle color and put those on the bottom. All that's left is sewing it all back together.
The thing about this quilt that I absolutely love is the quilting. I have challenged myself to branch out and try new things with my quilting and I went all out on this one. I had never done the swirls before, and for my straight lines I tried a new technique where you use rulers on the machine while you quilt. (More quilting techniques in future posts!)
So here I am going to talk a little bit about color choices. Like I said before, you literally cannot pick "wrong" colors for a quilt. You can't. That is what can make quilting classes or having a quilting network so fun. Seeing other people's finished products can be very refreshing and inspirational. As you can see, I chose brightly themes cool colors for my quilt, but even from the pattern pictured on the book above, you can make almost a completely different quilt just by choosing different colors. Here are some more examples I found on Pinterest. It is the same pattern, just different colors.
I love both of these, but I would never have chosen these fabrics because I never could have imagined the finished products. One thing I can find helpful when trying to plan out a quilt is to search the pattern online and see what other people have done with it. This is a great way to start branching out, which I could definitely become better at.
Thanks for reading!
