Ok, that me see if I can answer this color question. I sometime confuse some of the terms so I will try to keep it simple.
There are 2 basic types of scrappy One we'll refer to as controlled scrappy. In this form you might have a common fabric, say the background color might be the same throughout
well the rest would be "scrappy"a wide variety of colors, prints through out your blocks. I might be wrong on this one but I'm sure someone here will catch it and explain if I am. Another form of a controlled scrappy might be where you have 2 color families ex: cream and red or blue and white, but you have MANY shades, hues, tones (like I said I confuse which is which) of each within the quilt so on the whole your only working with 2 colors throughout but a large variety of those 2 colors.
Or there is a total scrappy and here you might have a much wider range of fabric. Here Contrast is key, When I speak of contrast I mean light and dark. One way quilters make these scrappy type quilts is to take their fabric pieces and simply place them in a bag or bin separated by light (whites,creams, nuetrals, pastels and lightest shades of various colors) and another bag or bin with their mediums and darks and when its time to assemble the pieces they pull
one from each bin and sew them together Without trying to
match, just put them together the way you pull them. This may seem odd at first but in the end you end up with the fantastic Contrast that make scrappy quilts so attractive.
I hope this helps a little. I know many have trouble with
colors so this was a great question, one we will probably address again when the FAQ page is up
Muriel