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Bird by Bird - Part 2

I've picked my fabric, which I agonized over but won't go into the sad details of that. It's just too embarrassing for me. Anyway, according to the pattern, you need 3 printed fabrics and 7 solid type fabrics.

I wanted something bright and colorful so shopped online. I can see a lot more fabrics online than at my local quilt shop but I normally don't like to shop online for fabrics that I have something specifically in mind for like this quilt. I can buy random fabric and make it work for totes or bags but for this I would rather see the fabric in person.

When you shop online you can't touch it and you can only HOPE the swatch they show is accurate. I really like the ruler at the bottom of the swatch below. This should show you that what you're seeing is a large square of the fabric. This one happens to be around 17x17" some are 12x12" but you get the idea. You should see some repeat in the swatch so you know that the whole pattern is being shown. I've purchased a batik fabric before and when I got it, I saw it was yellow with a brown aqua marbling, which I did not want in my yellow fabric. Needless to say I wasn't all that happy. I checked online where I bought the fabric and sure enough, no brown/aqua marbling showed on the swatch. So be careful.

This fabric is from Michael Miller's Fiesta line called Esme in Chocolate and I found it at fabric.com but had to purchase it at hawthornethreads.com.

So I found my main fabric. The pattern called for: A large flower print, a stripe and a dot fabric.


So I went ahead and found 2 more prints in the Fiesta line. My "dot" fabric isn't really a dot but I figure it will work anyway.



I picked my next 7 solid fabric colors using the main fabric swatch. I picked 2 aqua colors (light/dark), 2 oranges (light dark), 1 yellow (light), green (dark), and pink (medium). I have to admit, this fabric and colors are a little out of my comfort zone. I almost never use stripes and I haven't worked with this bold of colors before. The green I picked is more of a grass green and not really in the color scheme of the print fabric. That's okay. I'm thinking the darker green color will really pop against the lighter colors of the print and the solids. And green looks good next to all of them so it should be a win win.

Also noticed, I picked light/dark values. Sometimes when you see a really nice quilt at a show, its not about the colors it's about the value of the color that you like. Most people like to see a gradient of 1 color. For example, a quilt could have a range of value of one color like pink. It would range from very light pink, light pink, pink, medium pink and dark pink. That's the value of the color. If everything in the quilt is all one value it may look nice but adding a darker or lighter value will add another layer of interest.






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