The HOW and the WHY of Fabric Choices

 I am opinionated. I believe that all other things being equal, fabric selection determines the success or failure of a quilt. 

There are lots of ways to make something look good. There isn't only one right answer. The right answer depends on what YOU want.

Having said that, I really want to make sure the quilts that I make or even simply the birds that I make are as great as they can be. And believe me, sometimes even I have to do it over to get it really right.

To wit:

I used this fun fabric on the back of the PRIZM quilt, and I thought it would be fun in a bird for my Mom's bird quilt because my mom loves FUN and a good joke. So I cut a big triangle and searched through my stash for breast and beak fabrics.

I was probably thinking with only half my brain. The wrong half. I thought the orange would sort of echo the patterns on the cats in the print. And the green would echo the green cats. But seriously, there is nothing to connect the three fabrics together, and compared to the fun cats, the orange and green are pretty boring and don't bring anything to the party. (Also, and more importantly, they don't share any OTHER colors with the fun print, and there's nothing connecting the wing fabric to the breast fabric to the beak fabric.)

Another issue was the pattern of the cats wasn't really being taken advantage of in the best way. 

BACK TO THE CUTTING TABLE....

Fiddling around a little bit (Can you say FUSSY CUT?) I found this fun green guy, and then it was OBVIOUS I had to use some fun green fabric for the bird breast.

And, OH! Look what I found for the beak! These colors repeat the colors that surround the silly green cat!

This is SO MUCH BETTER! And when I found that strip of bird legs with the colored blocks, I knew I had a winner. Silly and fun, here we come!

But you know, sometimes one idea generates another one, and you know me... gotta follow that!

So here are more silly cat-like animals having fun. The breast fabric here is leftover blue fabric from the backing of the Blue Ribbons quilt I just finished. The legs are gray, and they seemed to fit perfectly.

But check out that beak fabric! Yes, those colors are in the funny animal print too....

See anything familiar?

When I say look at your fabric for what it CAN BE instead of just WHAT IT IS, I am not joking.

Here are the two fabrics next to each other, so you can see how much they have in common. This kind of similarity is something you have to be on the lookout for.

You too can make birds: Get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.