choosing fabrics for Dear Dottie
I am so excited to see all the artful Dear Dottie quilts that are sure to be born during our sew-along. The event officially kicks off on November 4th, so now is the time to gather your fabrics.
I’ve been sorting through my scraps and stash to develop a plan for my quilt. Maybe you’re working on the same?
Since the last week of the quilt-along brings us to December, I thought it would be fun to make a holiday-themed quilt. And, in fact, I have a smattering of holiday fabrics and scraps begging to be used.
Every one of these was originally ordered for making Christmas stockings (such a fun project!), but there’s always something left over, isn’t there? That’s what I love about scrap quilting - there’s such delight in making use of what you already have!
To start off, I organized my holiday scraps into color groupings to better see what I have. Then I added matching fabrics from my stash to bolster those color themes. In particular, I found a lot of low volume-ish fabrics with red/pink/aqua/green prints in my stash. These will be quite useful, since Dear Dottie requires a generous portion of low volume (white assortment) background fabrics.
Ok, what else do I need? For dark assortment fabrics, I’ll use a really dark green (below, left). Even though I love how black looks in my full-scrappy Dear Dottie quilts, trying something different is always intriguing. Dark green will suit the holiday theme perfectly.
The pattern also calls for light assortment background fabrics. The mint and pale aqua fabrics on the far right can work for that. I also added some candy pink fabrics in the middle. This playful color will break up the traditional green/red Christmas palette. Plus, that particular pink is already showing up in my holiday fabrics!
Maybe I’ll use the pink as the colored dots inside the dark backgrounds. In my original Dear Dottie throw quilt, I used orange as the colored dots with dark backgrounds. It was a subtle theme that you might not pick out easily, but it makes an impact. Warm, bright colors really pop in a dark frame.
So here is my basic color scheme. It’s looking festive and bright! Now that I have that settled, I can go through my scrap drawers to find more scraps that can play along. I’m all about diversity! But will there be enough? I’m not sure and it would be fun to have more holiday fabrics. I could also use some low volumes that are wintery, but calmer than my colorful bunch.
At Quilt Sandwich I found exactly what I needed! For starters, I’ll take 1/3 yard cuts of each of these simple low volumes. Snow Flowers Hydrangea might go well with my “light assortment” backgrounds. The others are perfect to bolster the white factor of my “white assortment.” I love the Libs Elliott Tattooed North fabric especially. Snowflakes! The other two are go-to basics: Dottie in Kerchief and Add it Up in Metallic Copper, for some holiday bling.
I also found these charming additions (from left):
Merry Holly to up the holiday factor on my colorful low volumes
Heavy Metals Turquoise to round out my teal holiday fabrics
Allison Glass Holiday Stripe a large scale print which will read in different ways, depending upon how I cut it
Add it Up in Mossy perfect with my dark green “dark assortment"
Allison Glass Handiwork Beadwork because I love it
Northcott Winterland Forest for its adorable wintery scenes. Will be fun to fussy cut!
Nordika Stellar which reminds me of snowflakes
Snöfall Mittens more wintry fun
As you can see, I added the dark gray element when I did my fabric shopping because those winter-themed prints were too good to pass up. I might use the dark gray as the dark colored dot fabrics. We shall see.
If you’re looking to add more diversity to your Dear Dottie fabrics, check out Quilt Sandwich’s color-themed custom bundles or browse their giant collection. With over 1000 bolts of designer quilting cottons, you’re sure to find something that hits the spot.
