It’s August, the very last month of Quilter’s Color Quest. I hope you’ve been enjoying the journey, whether you are following along by working through your copy of my book or by following our progress online. This month I’ll touch on the last two conceptual chapters in The Quilter’s Field Guide to Color: A Hands-on Workbook for Mastering Fabric Selection.

First off “How to Build a Stash”, a chapter that answers questions like:

• What’s the purpose of a fabric stash?

• How do I get started?

• What size fabric cuts should I buy?

• What are some essential ingredients?

When I’m purchasing fabric, I mentally group fabrics in two general categories: Helpful Fabrics and Limiting Fabrics. Pages 95 and 96 describe these categories in detail with examples cut from my stash.

In fact, I cut a lot more examples of helpful and limiting fabrics when I prepared this chapter’s content. Today I opened my book samples box and dumped out the baggies with these example fabric cuttings, welcoming as always a little fabric play.

The Patchwork Challenge in this chapter (pg 97) asks you to identify a helpful fabric from your stash and think about what makes it particularly useful. I chose the Flea Market Fancy seeds fabric (top, center), an ever-popular print which has proved its usefulness for countless quilters. So what makes it useful? I see it as a little bit dottie, a little bit stripy with a one-color + neutral color scheme. The combo of natural shapes (seeds) and geometric elements (dots/stripes) makes it super-versatile.

Rather than make a patchwork block, I decided to coordinate fabric swatches between my helpful fabrics group and my limiting fabrics group.

As expected, it was super easy to make matches with a ready-to-go supply of helpful swatches on hand! In each of these pairings, the “limiting” fabric is on the left. Hm, this would be a fun way to go about a scrap quilt!

Many of my already-made bear paw blocks do combine a helpful fabric with a limiting one. For example, that sunglasses print has a very specific vibe. Pairing it with simply blue curls was an easy way to go. Same with the color-block bear paw below. It has a lot of character and the black running stitch print is a nice, subtle complement.

I always try to keep a balance of limiting and helpful fabrics on hand. The limiting prints, like Anna Maria Horner’s gorgeous florals, often inspire my color schemes. The helpful prints allow me to reinforce my favorite colors, all while creating space for the showy fabrics to shine.

If you’re new to quilting and working on building a fabric stash, I encourage you to focus on helpful fabrics. Whether it’s simple blenders like these Spotted fabrics by Zen Chic or more detailed stripes, florals or geometrics, one-color fabrics give your stash a lot of flexibility and lend themselves easily to scrap quilting too!

Take the Challenge

I look forward to seeing the wonderfully helpful fabrics you identify and sew with, in response to the Stash Patchwork Challenge on page 97.

Don’t forget to 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!

July’s winner is @QuiltsFromTheLittleHouse. She wins the story bundles, Kinder Garden and Twilight that I curated at Fenceline Fabrics. I’ll be in touch about delivery of your prize! August’s prize will also be a specially curated bundle. I’ll pop in later on to reveal that bundle as we wrap up Quilter’s Color Quest.