Dos and Don’ts When Choosing Fabrics for Your Flower Art Quilt

I’m writing this blog because I know many new-be quilters out there may need some guidance when choosing fabrics for a specific project. Specifically, one of my flower patterns or a landscaped, something that you want to give a realist/painterly look. It matters what kind of fabric you use. I’m going to speak specifically about my technique and using my flower patterns, but the concept works across the board. You can’t use any run-of-the-mill quilters stash for making these art quilts. So, what is my technique? I’m painting a painting using use fabrics. So, when you buy my patterns, you are to?

Batik fabrics were designed back in the day (thank you, Hoffman, of California); I had the idea of using them like paint because they had this watercolor feel, and I thought they would look like a painting. It is dyed in such a way to give a multi-colored and value feel like you look like it was painted, and they did, and they still do. Most realistic quilt artists use batiks and hand-dyed textures, even tone-on tones, to get that look.

 

First DON’T.  Don’t use solid fabrics when you want a painterly look in your flower quilts. It doesn’t work. It gives a very flat look with no dimension. Now, if that’s what you want? Go for it. But my patterns were designed, and the pieces are layered to give a watercolor look by using the right kind of fabrics with fabrics. We want the viewer to come up close and say,” did they paint that?”

Now for all the solid fabric designers out there, I love your fabrics and the colors. I buy them. They are beautiful. But not for making my realistic flower or landscape quilt.

Use the color chart in the pattern as a color and value reference. Look at how the colors relate to each other.” Is this one darker or lighter than the one on top?

Do you have value in your fabrics? The range of lights to darks is so essential. Remember, dark colors reseed, and light colors come towards you, just like painting a still life. And my flower patterns are a “still life.” The value rules change when doing landscapes. We will talk about that at another time.

Don’t skip making the color chart in every pattern. The pattern instructed you to make the color chart in your chosen colors first. Please do it! It’s a visual reference guide to help as you build your flower. Very important.

I hope this helps you when making your flower quilts. I have been working on turning some of my patterns into digital downloads, but I worry you will use the wrong fabrics.

I use batiks and hand-dyed fabrics to make my quits look like a painting without using paint. This is my secret for achieving that look.

 When I had a student bring their own fabrics to class, only 1% understood what to bring to class. But 99% of the students brought the wrong fabrics and went home unsuccessful. Not good. When I started making kits for the classes, all were successful, and learned how to make a flower look real by using the right fabrics. They discovered that fabric is now a painting tool.

Check out my video above for more fabric information.

Remember being a quilter require us to have many kinds of fabrics.

Texas Wildflower Quilt

New class is coming Saturday November 28. That just means that I will post the class on that date but you can watch it any time you want. You can always watch my classes here on my blog or on my YouTube channel. This is a free class about 2 1/2 hours long. I have broken it up into 2 parts, the second part will post on Saturday Dec 5, and covers how to thread play this quilt.

I thought you may want to know the history of this quilt. It was originally made for an auction that The Quilt Show had to raise money for a special quilter Libby Lehman who had a stroke plus other complication. If you don't know who Libby is you need to google her. She is a true Quilt Star. And helped paved the way for many quilters including myself. 

The below video is my process of making the auction quilt back in 2014.  I hand dyed most of the fabric for this quilt. After I watch video I wish I had some more of that background fabric. I love that print.

Later when making this pattern I had to simplified the number of fabrics in the quilt. I originally had 60 different colors of fabrics, which is not good for a pattern for the public. Now it has 20 and you can always add more.

I also found this beautiful song by Oran. It's call Every Flower. So appropriate don't you think? 

If you would like to make this quilt you can find all the supplies on my Etsy shop. There is a Shop Botton above on the tab bar. I have patterns, kits that included fabrics and the pattern, yards of Steam-A-Seam 2 which is the fusible web I use and thread packs for the Texas Wildflower. 

I hope you get inspired by this video and want to make your own Wildflower Quilt. You don't have to use Texas in the name. If you are from Illinois you can call it the Illinois Wildflower. It's all ok with me. But Libby is a Texan and I'm a Californian and we can all be wildflowers. Hope to see you back here for class on Saturday Nov 28.

Summer Dogwood

Its been a crazy spring at my house. We are getting ready to sell our house which means packing up your item to stage your house like you don't really live there. I understand the process but when you work and run a business out of that house it get real tricky.  When I need to find all the things I just hid from the people who are on there way over to look at your home, I get a little crazy.
If we sell this house I will be surprised for sure. But we are trying.

In all the commotion I have not been blogging, so sorry for that.  I do have some new videos to show you.   The first is a video that I created is of the building process of my Dogwood flower pattern. My patterns are different than other designers.  So I like to give you more visuals to help you create or just purely entertain you for a moment.
The song is by Darius Ranker and its called Wagon Wheel. I made this video back in December. Enjoy!

Today someone emailed me that forgot to write in the pattern how to do the seeds in the center of the flower.  So here it is. I put the seeds on the flowers, last. So here is the video and the instruction for the flower seeds below.

1.  Fuse your U fabric. 
2. Trace 3-4 seed shape from the large lay out guide.
3. Fold you U fabric in half and pin the traced seed pattern onto the fabric and cut out the 4 shapes out. because the fabric is folded you will have 8 seed shapes. do this again until you have the desired amount.
4.  Now arrange like the photo shows.  
5. Press in place.