It’s official. I’m a color nerd.

Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about my upcoming workshop on using inspiration fabrics better to choose quilt fabrics.

Maybe it’s because I haven’t been in my quilt studio in a while – it’s all in chaos because I’m trying to clean it up and clean it out. On top of that, I’ve been busy and just haven’t found time to do any stitching. And now I’m getting itchy to stitch, just thinking about it!

Maybe I’m just a color nerd. I see color combinations everywhere.

I was “doing my hair”, and looked over and noticed the winter scarf that I’ve had for years and had had around my neck (my neck gets cold, even inside), my green pajama top, and an orange hand towel (pink and orange towels in our bathroom, because this is my shower curtain):

Anyway, I looked over at the pile I’d dropped on the counter, and what did I see? An inspiration fabric, and two solids that looked great with it.

Funny – in all the years I’ve worn that scarf, I never put those colors with it. I’ve seen it as pink and dark turquoise, which it is. Come to find out, however, it has blue-green (or, rather, green-blue!) and orange hidden in it, too, and the top and the towel highlighted those colors.

Wait - are there actually green-blue and orange in it? If you look closely, to my eye it’s really the turquoise and the gold working together to “look like” green-blue, and the pink and the yellow meld together to “look like” orange. It doesn’t matter that orange and green-blue are not actually in the design. What we see is what matters, and if we see green-blue and orange when those colors are near the inspiration fabric, then our palette has just grown by two hues and all of their tones, shades and tints.

It is a bit mind-boggling, if you think about it. A color palette that works with one inspiration fabric could include the colors and the values of those colors that are in the inspiration fabric, plus colors that are combinations of those hues and all their values. That’s a lot to choose from! And the cool thing is, you get to pick!

I love the process of gathering and narrowing and choosing, partially because I get to play with my fabric stash, and partially because it is fun to discover new possible combinations of fabrics. Maybe it says something about the size of my stash, but I can often create two or three potential quilts mostly from my stash. The palettes often have different looks, so I get to pick how I want people to feel when they see my quilt. Kinda cool.

Don’t let the picking get overwhelming. Find ways to simplify the choosing. Gather all the colors, values and variety of fabric characteristics that could possibly work, and then narrow down the choices until you identify what makes you happy. It’s all about getting to what makes you happy.

Tell me what you love and don’t love about using inspiration fabrics to help you choose fabrics in the comments below.