Oh, now this is a subject near and dear to my heart! I love love love color. Most of the people who see my quilts in person mention something about my color/fabric choices so I think it's my strong point. I have inherited an "eye"- probably from my dad's late mom- she had her own craft business- because I can match a fabric that has been sitting on my shelf at home for years without having it in front of me. That said, not everyone likes the crazy wild colors that I put together, but I sure do! :0) My quilts make me happy!
I will have to take a look at those books. I have been requesting books to be sent to my library with the interlibrary loan program so I will put those on my list. They even ordered the first Material Obssession book for me. (Awesome book! I want to order it and the sequel. There is a blog too.
http://materialobsession.typepad.com...ial_obsession/)
How I choose my stash fabric is: if it is a bright clear color in a polka dot/stripe/floral/geometric and the price is right- it comes home with me! I like fabrics that are more blenders than focus fabrics. I think if you have a really standout fabric then the focus is going to be on the fabric itself instead of on the quilt or the design of the quilt. I do like a really cool focus/larger scale fabric for a back, though, so I do buy those. I try to get larger amounts of those, too, then.
I have my fabric sorted by color and somewhat theme- the holiday is in a stack, the 30's are by themselves, solids are by themselves. I have about 10-15 "future quilts" pulled on a separate shelf and these are fabrics that I either have bought for a certain quilt or ones that I have a couple of the fabrics picked out and am looking for more. I let them sit there and keep looking at them, maybe picking up more coordinating prints here and there, and the design will "ferment" in my head. I am always thinking quilts in the back of my mind so I may take a year or two to come up with a design for a stack of fabric. Or I will see a quilt I like- say a zig-zag quilt and it will hit me- oh! The purple and green stack would look great like that! And then I know what that stack will be made into. I usually will end up pulling more blenders from my stash and adding them to the pile because I like a lot of different fabrics in my quilts.
On occasion I will see a pattern I like or think of a design and then go right to the stash, pull a bunch of fabric and then hit the quilt store to round it out. Usually, though, I start with the fabric and the design follows.
This is a neat thread- I like seeing how other people do things.