Thread color
 

I am making a baby quilt with appliqués - whales and sailboats. Colors include navy, light blue, purple, yellow, bright green, grey. How do you decide what color to use for the quilting?

Thank you.

It depends on whether you want it to blend into the background or stand out. With those colors, I might think about a variegated thread color. There's no right or wrong...it's just what you want it to look like. You could use a different color in each block. It's for a baby...it should be fun with a capital F.

I am very inexperienced and do not want my quilting to stand out.

If I want my quilting to blend in rather than stand out I usually use a thread that blends in with the bulk of the fabric which is often the background. But sometimes it is one of the variegated threads that have most of the colors I'm using throughout the top.

If in doubt always go with grey.

What color is the background? If you have mainly one color of fabric behind the applique, go with that ... otherwise, I agree with busy fingers that grey is your best bet.

You also want to be sure to use a 50wt cotton thread for the quilting (or higher) because it will meld into the fabric more and you notice mistakes much less. You also may want to consider whether you want to quilt over the applique at all. Depending on the size of each applique design, you may be able to just quilt around the design, which would probably help limit your choices even further. Among the remaining choices, I'd usually pick the least saturated color.

But no one's to say that you have to only use one color for quilting the entire top. I think it's fun to machine quilt around my applique with one color, machine quilt my border in another color with a different pattern & then do some small scale quilting by hand inside the applique, matching my thread to the color of the applique. I'm sure it will be beautiful no matter what you do. :)

I usually dribble the thread on each section of a top to see what show the least. My Avatar is done with 7 or 8 colors. I never mind changing the top thread so that it matches.