Quilter’s Color Quest began in March and continues month by month as we work through the hands-on exercises in my book, The Quilter’s Field Guide to Color: A Hands-on Workbook for Mastering Fabric Selection.

July and August are our last two months of Quilter’s Color Quest. If you’re joining in late or missed a few, don’t worry. I will post a round-up blog post with links to all of the Quilter’s Quest blog posts at the end of the event.

In July we’ll explore Story and Inspiration. Think of these as jumping off points for pulling together a fabric palette. Telling a Story begins on page 78.

It’s not hard to understand how a quilt can tell a story. You’ve seen me do it with the Dutch-inspired Penny Sampler. Both the patchwork style and the colors I’m choosing are guided by my experience of life in The Netherlands. The “story” is the fields and flowers, architecture and culture of the Dutch people, as I see it.

Story gives you something with so much depth and texture to inspire your color and pattern choices. If you haven’t used story before, now is the time to give it a try!

Take the Challenge

The swatch challenge on pg. 81 invites you to work out some color stories with the color swatches included in the book. It’s nice to do these one at a time, since putting multiple color stories on one page is visually overwhelming.

It’s finally summertime. I'm inspired to create a picnic at the park color story. My Kona Fern background fabric is a perfect stand in for grassy fields. I imagine my family in an idyllic picnic spot, lounging on our colorful picnic quilt with some delicious food. What colors do I see?

Watermelon pink. Strawberry red. Soft, sunny Lemon yellow. Brilliant turquoise and spicy Tiger orange. Amongst the saturated summer hues, soft sand is at our feet, a dreamy Pool blue sky floats overhead and the Cinnamon tones of the picnic basket and tree branches mix with all the lovely greens.

My fabric scraps have lots of potential for a picnic at the park color palette. I found bright and happy colors with flowers that speak of the outdoors. More important in my view, I found these happy plaids, which really feel like a picnic to me. That’s what I love about story - it’s so concrete. If plaids feel like a picnic to me, that makes them “right” for this project in a special, energizing way.

So you see, It’s not just the colors that are guided by story, but the style and attitude of the prints themselves.

And here are my picnic blocks. I like!

This week, do one or both challenges for Story. Share a photo of your results on Instagram with #QuiltersColorQuest and #QuiltersFieldGuidetoColor. Each month I’ll be drawing one random winner from those who use the Color Quest hashtag. Each photo is a chance to win fabric!

June’s winner is @deblyncam. She wins the pair of neutral fabric bundles I curated at Winter Creek Cloth. I’ll be in touch about delivery of your prize! July’s prize will also be a specially curated bundle to accompany one of the color themes we’re exploring this month. I’ll pop in later on to reveal that bundle as we continue on Quilter’s Color Quest.