Hope you don't mind Rhonda, but I notice there have been a lot of questions regarding colors and fabric amounts. This was my reasoning. First of all I have a lot of small pieces of calico (less than a yard) that I have accumulated at garage sales etc. I figured that alone will establish kind of a theme, then I decided I would use a single color for the "background" of each block (ecru). If I add sashing it can be either the ecru or another color that goes with all of the blocks. In the first block the colors are pink, dark rose, brown, blue and green, probable colors to be used in subsequent blocks. Thinking of the quilt this way, it isn't necessary to know the amount of fabric, except for the Ecru. I have a very large chunk of it. If you did want to go with a limited palette I would just start with the size of the quilt. For instance I usually make a queen size, which takes approximately 9 yards for the front. Then I would divide that by the number of colors. I've used this method many times and it always works for me. Hope this makes sense and helps someone.