Choosing Fabric

A couple of months ago, I posted my thoughts about quilts made from one line of fabric here.  I've continued to think about the evolution of quilt fabric selection.  My understanding is that initially quilts were made from cut-up clothing that was no longer usable and from fabric left over from home-sewn clothing.

In time, we began buying fabric for the express purpose of making quilts.  I used to enjoy wandering around the fabric store, choosing first my main fabric, and then pulling colors from that fabric and picking the accompanying fabrics.  The shops used to have all of the blues together, the greens, the browns, the yellows.  According to color, not according to fabric family.

That isn't so anymore.  When I go into Old Country Store, for example (and I sure wish I were going there soon) I find all of the Moda in one part of the store, with the bolts arranged according to fabric line.

Bill's Baskets, above, was made from one line of William Morris fabric.  Each fabric exactly goes with all of the others.  And while I do love this quilt -- do not get me wrong -- there is something sterile about it because it is all from the same line, or family, of fabric.  My Going Rouge quilt is another example.

Look, here's Twelve Oaks again.  There are a bazillion different fabrics in this quilt.  From all kinds of designers and lines of fabric.

And somehow it looks richer, more alive, to me than Bill's Baskets.  Because of that diversity.

When we go out to Lancaster County, I always insist on stopping at The Log Cabin Quilt Shop.  Sometimes I'll pick up a FQ pack to bring home.  And it won't be all matchy-matchy either, because the proprietor of the shop isn't afraid to cut the fabric herself, and to draw from this designer and that, this line and oh my that one, and combine into absolutely wonderful groups. 

I want to get back to picking out the fabrics that go together in the quilt.  When I am released from my self-imposed moratorium on purchase of fabric for new projects, I want to go and pick out a main fabric and then wander around to select the go-withs.  To audition the various choices.  Ah!  Here it is:  To do the deciding myself, not have it pre-done for me.

I'm just sayin'.