Schill93

I am a newer quilter, but have become addicted to fabric as many of you can relate to, so in the past year and a half I have quite a stash now. My only quilts so far however have been made from pre-cuts where the designer usually provides twenty different prints in the collection.

I have heard it mentioned by various YouTube personalities that the “more” the better. Since the largest majority of my stash is now in yardage (about 2000 yards of different prints), I have a pretty good selection. But I still have a problem selecting 18 or 20 different prints that work “Really Well” together. I might find ten that work really well together, but then as I go the next ten might be “can work” prints. I realize that you can make a two color quilt, and they can be very pretty. But other than those two or three color quilts, do you find that “the more prints the better.” Do using 20 different well coordinated prints usually look better than using ten?

I know there are no rules and you can use whatever you want, but that is not what I am addressing. I am addressing the asthetics of a quilt. Do you find that being able to put say 20 different prints together is usually more pleasing than using 10?

TouchOfRustic

I feel like this is the drawback to precuts. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does stunt your artistic development. You have a lot of fabric, with which you can do a lot of things. My advice would be to take a step back and expand your color theory and design skills. Search on amazon for ‘quilters guide to color’ and you will find a number of great books on the subject. I don’t think the answer is quite so much 10 or 20 prints, but more, what type of aesthetic are you trying to achieve? It takes time to develop your style, and only you can answer those questions for yourself.

Tartan

I think the more the merrier in Scrap quilts look wonderful. In regular quilts, I seldom use more then 5 or 6 as too many fabrics confuse the piecing pattern in my opinion. If you pick a big print fabric, the little dots along the selvages will give you 5 or 6 colours that were in that big print and you can use the dots to pick other colours to go with it.

Mousie

I like what Tartan said.
I love colors and that's my problem. I love them all and want to use too many
in "regular" quilts. It gets mind boggling.
It does all come down to what You like, but since you asked, I find more than
5 or 6 to get to be too much for me.
Scrappy? go for it!

peaceandjoy

I'm a "the more, the merrier" girl. Love Bonnie Hunter's quilts, where she will use 4 or so colors, plus a neutral, but within those colors, she uses the full range. So reds might be almost pink through burnt oranges to fire engine red.

Are you using a pattern? That would give you how many actual colors you need, although you might use more than one fabric to get to required yardage. It's really in your taste; do you like "scrappy" or does that just look like chaos to you?

bkay

I would suggest finding a pattern for a quilt that you want to make. The instructions will tell you how many colors and how much you need of each one. You will generally have a light, a dark and some medium tones. You pick those fabrics out of your stash that go well together.

I, too, bought a lot of fabric as soon as I started quilting. (Luckily, I didn't pay a lot for it, as most came from estate sales.) Still, when I found something I wanted to make, I didn't have fabric that worked in my collection. I've donated a lot of it.

If you want to make scrappy quilts, you can use most anything. Still you need contrast.

Most of my quilts have been I spy quilts, so I can use anything for the back, cornerstones or sashing (within reason).

So, when I get the urge to buy fabric and I don't have a pattern in mind, I buy something that will work for an I Spy quilt.

bkay

tallchick

Get a color wheel! I find it extremely helpful when I’m stuck or need help figuring what looks well together. There are several you can choose from, and YouTube is also a great source for using them.

tesspug

You can't ask a question like that. Aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder. You can make a pleasing quilt with as few as two fabrics and with as many as a thousand. It truly depends and what your pattern is and what you like. Pick the ten fabrics you feel go really well and make your quilt with them. Google quilts in those colors and find the pattern you want. Then go for it.

Littlecanvases

to me - its all about the block and pattern. For example, Storm at Sea - pattern is different depending on what fabrics you put together. You can do a Storm at Sea with 2 colors, 5 etc. but each is completely different even though the pieces are the same. I would pick a block you like - then I would pick fabrics you like together, experiment. Also - in a word - Pinterest :-)

Iceblossom

Short Answer: It all depends on what you are going for and the size of your stash.

Long Answer: It is hard for many quilters to move past kits and past other people's designs. I understand the lure of kits, I get a great deal of satisfaction when I have gone through my stash and prepared my fabric, cut my pieces etc., and I have it ready to sit down and sew -- it's a lovely feeling, like a present to myself

When you are selecting fabrics to use, keep in mind what you've learned while making those kits and what looks you want. A lot of people over coordinate their fabrics in my opinion and to my eye the results are bland and washed out -- but to someone else it is exactly what they want! Personally, I tended to buy a lot of "tiny viney" small scale prints and had to learn that I like contrast in scale as well as value and color. I have vision issues and prefer sharp contrast because it is going to look fuzzy anyway...

At this point in my quilting, almost everything I make is scrappy to some extent, but it is planned. I started about 40 years ago before the rotary revolution and don't come from a family of quilters so am self taught and didn't grow up with quilts. Judy Martin's book Scrap Quilts really changed how I viewed them (scrap quilts) and was a big influence on me when it came out because before then I hadn't seen scrap quilts that I liked, only ugly "use" quilts.
https://www.amazon.com/Scrap-Quilts-.../dp/096029709X

For me I started thinking more in terms of "values" so light, dark, medium which can be any sort of print or style or color. Or you think in terms of color groups, or style of fabric -- there are many routes to go.

My current quilt will be 42 different purple fabrics in the blocks (one per block) and then a set of half blocks and some plain fabric for the border in a 43rd fabric. It is a tessellating two-color star/pinwheel design. I'm using white-on-white fabrics for the non-purple part, each block will have the same fabric within it, as it happened to be easy to cut to where I will have no more than 4 blocks with the same fabrics, and I have a piece big enough (hopefully!) for all the border units.

But the next scrappy project will be using civil war fabrics, a different palate and style. I used to do a lot of fabric swapping around Y2K and I have a bunch of 10" squares to use, so need to do something with a lot of variety and small pieces. In that quilt each piece of fabric will be random in terms of what fabric I use, but placed in the block by value (dark corners, etc.) with the goal of having every piece of fabric in any given block unique, but using the same fabrics in more than in one block especially with different shapes and sizes. To me I find this look rather chaotic but I think will work with my available fabric better than piecing each block with 4-5 coordinated fabrics and is the right thing to do. But I've been mulling it over in my mind for some time, my natural inclination is to add fabric by different blocks rather than within each block, but I've gone all over wild before with great results.

I also do charm quilts, where each piece of fabric is unique. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish in terms of design considerations and such. But you learn that if you throw enough fabrics together, it works. For me though, it actually works with a lot of effort and tricks I've learned through the years. If you go random, well random can result in ugly. I think most quilters want aesthetic randomness, which isn't exactly random.