Hints for choosing fabrics, esp hue and intensity
 

How do you do this? How do you know if a fabric will work, or stick out incorrectly. I see all the pictures of how you've organized your fabrics, and I think it is at work here, too. Is distant viewing important? Thanks in advance for your help. I have a feeling this is a hard question.

If I need lots of fabric choices I will s sometimes choose a busy border and match all the colours I need to the border colour. As for distance viewing..yes, it is a good idea and one way of doing it is to photograph it or use a door viewing device.

When I think of hues, I think of color saturation as well as the tone ( does the color read light, medium, or dark). The best tip I learned was to take a picture of the fabrics on my smart phone and convert the color picture to black and white. The black and white photo will help identify light from medium from dark fabrics.
The quilt pattern itself is important to consider when picking out fabrics as some patterns maybe more suited for smaller prints rather than larger bold prints. Color placement is equally important. Sometimes I think it's a art to find the most pleasing fabrics lol. I find inspiration in magazine photographs or art books for color play. Enjoy the journey with colors.

In addition to hue(color) and intensity(brightness, purity of hue) you also need to think about value(darkness or lightness) of the fabrics going into your quilt. Some quilt patterns really need lots of contrast in value to show up well, others not so much. When I’m contemplating fabrics for a quilt I lay them all out together and take a picture with my cell phone camera and switch the photo into black and white, that way it’s easy to see the relative value of the fabrics to one another.

I’ve tried using a door viewer for quilts in progress, but since I like to play with arrangement of blocks to develop secondary patterns I prefer to take photos with my cell phone camera to help me remember various arrangements. If you step back a little from your quilt when taking your picture, you will get a photo that gives the effect of distance.

Rob

Oh, yes, value was what I was thinking about.

I often use a value finder which is transparent red plastic. For red fabrics, I look through a transparent green plastic value finder. Squinting also helps.

The black and white tip really helped me.

Watson

I lay my fabrics on the end of one of the tables in my sewing room. I often leave them there while I'm working on other projects so that I look at them often. If something looks off, I pull it out and see how the other fabrics look. I often do this for a period of weeksm adding and subtracting fabrics. When I think I have the combination down, I take pics, turn them black and white and then make my final selection.

Of course, sometimes I'm not that scientific. Some times I put the fabrics I've chosen down and stand on my sewing table and pull other fabrics from the boxes on the shelves on the wall and drop them on the other fabrics. From 5'4" away things that work and don't often show up. I know it sounds humorous, but it's worked more than once for me when I was stuck on what to add to a particular group of fabrics.

Picking fabric for quilts are very difficult for me also. It's a labor of love. I love fabric and the wonderful patterns and colors, but to pick 4 or 5 out for a quilt is difficult. I agree with cashs_mom , laying out the fabrics and look at them for a while & take picture in black and white. I also ask people.... local quilt shop, friends, QB, & I've actually asked total strangers in quilt shops for their opinion. Haha. I think I'm getting better with time. Hang in there.

I like to lay my choices across the back of a chair near a window and glance at them as I do housework. The misfit will jump out at me. When I worked at JoAnn's before cell phones, we stacked bolts so the sides were visible, stood back and squinted. Somehow that worked wonderfully well choosing coordinates.