Colorsheet! Nineteen Thirty quilt

What would your Nineteen Thirty quilt look like? Dream a little dream with me - - -

The weekend is almost upon us. While the Nineteen Thirty quilt pattern releases on Monday, you can have the Colorsheet today to jump start some weekend color and fabric play. Download, print and enjoy!

Download Colorsheet

Fabric Selection Tips

Avoid: large scale prints and prints with strong internal contrast. Why? They will break up the shapes in the quilt. Small scale prints or prints that are evenly colored will read better as orchid flowers, the star in the center medallion, the petal points, etc.
More colors = more challenge. This quilt has many interesting elements, which you may like to keep in a balanced relationship. Using a broad palette, as I did, gives you a lot more to juggle.
Consider solids for the seeds. Solids will contrast automatically with an orchid flower print fabric, plus it’s easy to find a shade that fits your color scheme. To really simplify, consider using one consistent solid for all of your seeds.
Go light on stripes and geometrics. I like soft prints like paisleys, florals and organic textures for this quilt.

Fabric Examples

Right: Listen to Your Heart bundle from Nanno Creative. Like many Art Gallery Fabrics collections, these are soft and dreamy with organic-style prints. Watch out for the white-background prints, which can have too much internal contrast.

Find Art Gallery Fabrics in Europe at Nanno Creative and Purple Stitches, or in the USA at Winter Creek Cloth, Sojo Fabric and Fat Quarter Shop.

Left: Forgotten Memories bundle from Quilt Sandwich. These soft florals are nicely uniform in color. The ginghams might be nice as seeds or reserved for the small squares patchwork.

Left: Rosa from A Thrifty Notion. Don’t forget to consider other Rifle Paper Fabrics prints for your Nineteen Thirty quilt. Most of their fabrics are a nice scale for this quilt, with oodles of florals on offer.

Find misc. Rifle Paper at A Thrifty Notion and Sojo Fabric.

Palette Ideas

When I was developing Nineteen Thirty, I considered a few other color palettes. They were mocked up on the first version of the quilt, and I never did finish coloring the small squares, but I think they’re still worth sharing in terms of palette.

Tilda-inspired

This was my original plan. I would have used fabrics from Tilda’s Hometown or Pie in the Sky collections. Here it would have been a good idea to use simple solids for the seeds, I think.

Spring-inspired

Here I wanted to try a much more limited color palette. The quilt also has less contrast, since there are fewer and less dramatic dark values. If working with fewer colors like this, I would have repeated orchid fabrics in the quilt rather than having all the orchids be made from different prints. That can make fabric selection easier!

Delft-inspired

In the Nineteen Thirty quilt pattern I share two mock ups to spark fresh ideas. The first is this monochromatic version, inspired by the blues that are famously associated with Delft pottery from The Netherlands. This mock up reflects the same value relationships as you see in my own quilt, and which are taught in the pattern. Thus, you can easily recreate this Deflt version or any monochromatic palette by following the value-oriented directions in the pattern regarding placement of light, medium and dark fabrics.

Flower-inspired

Another idea? Consider swapping value for color. Instead of low value, medium value and dark value, you could use three main colors in your quilt and still follow the pattern regarding fabric placement. Here I’ve used coral in the locations for dark value fabrics, yellows in the locations for medium value fabrics and creams in the locations for low value fabrics. An earthy pink as my background fabric brings it all to life.

I hope this gets your juices flowing! Still have questions or feeling stumped about fabric choices for Nineteen Thirty? Don’t hesitate to be in touch!

P.S. Would you rather recreate my quilt with the same Bramble fabrics? Quilt kits are still available at Kleinkariert in Germany and at Sojo Fabric in the USA!