There is a version of fabric selection built on the color wheel, tone and volume. Micheline of Americana Quilting calls that brilliant, and says it is not how she picks fabric. Her method takes one print and lets it decide.
She and her friend Leah pull fabrics for a baby quilt here, and the approach fits in three moves.
First, the easy one: buy a precut, because someone has already done the choosing. Second, the one she uses: pick a focal fabric, the print you know you want. Theirs is a novelty print with turtles, frogs and dragonflies that carries every color the quilt will need, and in the pattern it becomes the hearts and the border.
The third move is the one worth writing down. Look at the focal fabric and count the versions of each color in it. Theirs has a dark green, a medium green and a lighter green, a darker pink and two lighter ones. That is the print telling you to bring variety rather than three matched fabrics. In Micheline's words, listen to what your fabric is saying.
From there it is pulling and rejecting in front of the actual background. One candidate goes onto the white to check it does not get lost, another is set aside for being too bright, and a pink that would otherwise work is out because it carries teal, and teal appears nowhere in the focal print. A baby quilt also wants simple prints rather than stylized ones, so the pulls stay in that register.
Two reassurances come out of their conversation. You do not need three of every color, and a fabric used once in the whole quilt has earned its place. And you can pull generously first, then cut back once the wrong shades are obvious on the wall.
The Quilter's Bible arrives at the same place from the other direction: a mixture of values, the lightness or darkness of each fabric, is what most quilters find most satisfying, and falling in love with one particular fabric can be the starting point for a whole design.
If you want the value side written out, our guide to choosing quilt fabric by value, color and texture covers the squint test and how much contrast each part of a block needs. Micheline's other videos are on the Americana Quilting channel.
