Have you ever fallen in love with a specific printed fabric, but you have no idea how to pull the rest of your fabric for your quilt? 

It’s happened to me so many times. I always find some fun novelty print and then go… wait… what else??? How am I ever going to find matching fabric?

Look no further. I will give you a fool-proof way to make sure your next fabric selection compliments that amazing print!

Start With Your Focus Fabric

You’ve found a gorgeous large-scale floral, a fun Halloween themed novelty print, or an abstract watercolor stroke in maybe TOO many colors. What do you do next? 

Start by identifying the colors already present in your focus fabric.

Identify the Colors

Look for:

• Main background color
• Neutrals
• Prominent Colors
• Accent Colors

A helpful way of figuring this out, instead of staring at the fabric until your eyes blur and you think “have I already seen that color?”, is to look at the selvedge. The selvedge should have little colorful circles on it, and these are the colors that are used in the fabric!

Choose Your Supporting Fabrics

Now it's time to start building the rest of your fabric pull.

As a general guideline, you might choose:

• Focus Fabric
• 1-2 Main Colors
• 1-2 Accent Colors
• 0-1 Neutrals

You can also think about the types of fabrics you're adding:

• Focus Fabric
• 1-3 Additional Prints
• 1-3 Tone-on-Tones
• 0-1 Solids
  

These categories overlap! You could have a tone-on-tone in one of your main colors, a solid in a neutral color, or a print that serves as an accent color.

You don't need to include every category, and you don't need to follow these numbers exactly. This is simply a good starting point for a smaller quilt that only needs a handful of fabrics. You can always scale the numbers up if you're making a larger quilt!

Add Contrast

As you're adding fabrics, look for contrast in:

• Light vs Dark
• Bright vs Muted
• Warm vs Cool
• Large-Scale vs Small-Scale Prints

A good way of looking at your value contrast is to look at your fabric pull through grayscale on your phone. This will show you whether you have a good range of light/medium/dark or not. 

Look at the Fabrics Together

Once you have your fabric pull, lay everything out together and take a step back.

Try:

• Taking a photo of your fabric pull
• Checking the value in grayscale
• Removing any fabrics that feel too distracting
• Adding a fabric if the palette feels too flat

Sometimes a fabric that looks perfect on its own doesn't quite work when it's placed next to everything else. That's okay! This is the time to experiment.

Trust Your Gut

This is your fabric pull! If you like what you've pulled together, use it!

There is no single correct way to choose fabrics for a quilt. The goal is to create a group of fabrics that you love looking at together and that gives you the feeling you want for your finished quilt.

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Now go find a fabric you love and start pulling! And when you've got your perfect fabric combination, you'll need a quilt pattern to turn it into something beautiful. Check out my collection of quilt patterns and find your next project.