cricket_iscute

I've been passionately quilting for over 20 years and have a large stash. I started out trying to get a variety of colors, a yard or two yards each, after hearing a lecture on building a stash. Sooner or later, I can use most anything, but some of the early fabrics are still waiting for their quilt. I do make a lot of scrap and string quilts for charity and a few coordinated quilts for me or gifts. I do not use or buy many fat quarters, surprisingly. Until recent years, I could never see what good they would do in a quilt.

In earlier years, I bought what appealed to me, usually novelty fabrics, and then found I did not have coordinating fabrics, especially the tone-on-tone and other support fabrics. In the past ten years, I've concentrated on having one primary focus fabric (a bolt of it), additional focus fabrics in the same colorways (3-4 yards of each) and a wide variety of support fabrics, mostly batiks. This works very well for building quilts, and I wish I had known earlier to buy groups of coordinating fabrics together earlier. It makes the most sense. Now, I carry the main focus fabrics with me when I shop. I buy those at times, but otherwise, only what I need for a project.

If I could add to my stash now, it would be backing fabric, TOTs. and neutrals. I always need those. I wish I had bought more of those, plus thread, when I had the income to support it.

It is important to me to understand color theory as a quilter and I have taken a number of classes. That helps considerably to use what I have in the stash without having to buy more. One great resource for color as represented is equilter.com, as their design board and swatches are true to color and it is easy to get what you expect there. They also tell you what the colors are in amazing detail. I've never been disappointed there, whereas when I go somewhere like fabric.com, who don't seem to have reliable scanning of fabrics, I am always surprised and usually disappointed with what they send - if they aren't out of it and haven't said so. I highly recommend the use of a color wheel and I carry one with me to shop.


That said, I notice that your wonderful stash -- I'm assuming that is your stash rather than a picture you found -- centers on blues, pinks, and yellows. You have a few blue greens and yellow-greens and neutrals. Those will work nicely together and if you don't want to introduce other colors, you should be all set. I do notice, however, that while you have lights and mediums, you don't have a lot of darker values. You also don't have accents that I see. An accent for blue would be orange, a complementary color. For yellow, it would be violet, for pink (tinted reds), it would be green. The blue-greens and yellow greens could use a blue-violet, yellow-orange or a red-orange accent.