Thread: colors

There several black 30's reproductions prints I have several. I have a quilt that my great-grandmother made in the 30's and there is black prints, brown prints and several gray prints. I was really surprised at this, there are darker colors also, not all pastel or lighter prints. Darker blues, greens and a many reds.

There are 30's repros in black. I used a 30's black (slightly dull) with tiny red & white flowers printed on it for the boots on my Sunbonnet Sue quilt (and the gloves for the Sam dolls).

It's definitely easier to work with colors that are all similar tones. Working with all dark fabrics -- like the Amish or P-BurgKay's great-grandmother -- or with all pastels -- like the more popular 1930's quilts -- eliminates one aspect of design in relation to color. If you're picky about how you want your quilt to look but don't feel confident in your ability to coordinate colors, you may want to stick to pastels ... or at least to 30's repro fabrics.

That said, I've seen many beautiful quilts that mix modern & repro together beautifully. Speaking from experience, I found that very, very difficult. Even adding in a single modern red by Moda resulted in me spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to achieve visual balance in my quilt. Once I finally figured out that the reds needed to be banished to the corners, I faced my next struggle in that I had another block that was a muted green with blue undertones. Not only was it reading rather dark, blue-green is also the direct complement of red, so it started to look grey when placed next to a red block.

Of course, I am that unfortunate combination of someone who lacks any innate ability to coordinate colors, but who has very strong opinions about how the colors go (or don't go) together in the finished quilt. I take every color theory class I can find, but it's still a struggle. Fortunately, my "disease" doesn't extend to other people's quilts ... so I'm sure your quilt will be lovely regardless of how many colors you work into it.

Your grandmother was probably using what fabrics she had on hand.

Kitsie - love your Dresden plate with the blacks - so dramatic!

Dunstar - I like how you balanced the reds with other strong colors. I think this may be the secret to using the darker 30's reproductions.

I would lay the fabrics out overlapping in various ways. When you walk into the room, how does it look? Does the black overwhelm? Does it simply help the others stand out? Does it bother you? It is your quilt, do what you feel good about.

Sharon Newman wrote in her books that most vintage quilts benefit from a bit of red. She wrote books on reproducing vintage quilts (when a vintage quilt is worn out, making something from scratch that is similar) and also on making quilts from vintage blocks. I have seen several pictures of quilts in her books where some red was used in the quilts, and they looked alive.