The Art of Choosing: Recognizing a Fabric's Overall Color

The Art of Choosing is a series discussing fabric, color, and the fabric selection process. The purpose of this series is to arm you with the tools and knowledge to build your own color schemes for your sewing and quilting projects. You'll dive deep into your stash, organize it, and hopefully look at your fabrics in a new way.

Recognizing a Fabric's Overall Color
Today we're going to discuss how to identify a fabric's overall color. This may seem somewhat straightforward, but it can be tricky. It will be really helpful later in the series when we discuss organizing a stash by color and creating color schemes. And don't forget, there is no right or wrong way of doing this. This is simply the way I do it!

I've broken this down into three different parts. First, I'm going to show you examples of different types of fabrics. Second, we'll dissect the color palette of a few fabrics, and finally you'll be challenged to identify overall color of a few difficult fabrics. For more information on the fabrics in each stack, simply click on the image.

Tone on Tone Fabrics

Tone-on-Tone Fabrics, originally uploaded by jenib320.

Tone-on-tone fabrics use different tones/shades of the same color to create a pattern. This makes it very easy to identify an overall color. These types of fabrics are great basics to start with when putting together a color scheme. They're often referred to as blenders, because they blend well with other types of fabric prints.

Color + White Fabrics

Color + White Fabrics, originally uploaded by jenib320.

These fabrics are generally made up of one single color in addition to white or cream. The white is used to create the pattern on the solid background. The color is more dominant than the white, making these relatively easy to identify. Another great place to start when organizing a palette, and also a type of blender.

Fabrics with Small Accents

Fabrics with Small Accents, originally uploaded by jenib320.

These fabrics have generally a strong background color with small accents of other colors. Again, at first glance it is easy to identify the colors of these fabrics. The accents are minimal enough that they don't take away from the overall color. When choosing fabrics for a project however, it is important to be mindful of these accents.

Fabrics with Large Accents

Fabrics with Large Accents, originally uploaded by jenib320.

Here is where things start to get tricky! These fabrics have large accents of other colors. They have strong background colors, which can sometimes be used to identify the overall color. However, in this case especially, the accents cannot be ignored when putting together your palette. While it is not necessary to have all accents represented in the palette, making sure that the colors work well with your palette will make it feel more cohesive. These are great fabrics to build a palette around. We'll discuss more about building schemes around a single fabric later on in the series.

Multicolored Fabrics

Multicolored Fabrics, originally uploaded by jenib320.

These fabrics are made up of many different colors and are therefore often difficult to identify. Think of these prints as being bossy. When building a palette they can't be ignored, they really jump out at you and can make or break your color scheme. Another great place to start when building a palette.

Analyzing Fabric Prints

Start with the Selvedge, originally uploaded by jenib320.

When analyzing a difficult (or any) fabric, often the first place I like to look is the selvedge. Those little colored dots can be helpful. While small, they do provide a look at the colors used in the fabric separately. It can also be helpful to tape up your fabric and look at it from a distance. Now let's dissect some fabric!

Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt

Flea Market Fancy, originally uploaded by jenib320.

This fabric is mainly made up of gold, pink, ivory, and brown. The two dominating colors, gold and pink, are represented equally in the pattern. This makes it a judgement call! I tend to stick this print in with my golds!

Midwest Modern II by Amy Butler

Midwest Modern II, originally uploaded by jenib320.

This fabric has a lot of different colors. It's made up of dark pink/red, two shades of pink, two shades of yellow, and turquoise. Because three of the six colors used are pinks, in addition to the background color being pink, I categorize this fabric as dark pink/red.

Good Folks by Anna Maria Horner

Good Folks, originally uploaded by jenib320.

I always struggle with this fabric! It's composed of brown and pink with small orange accents. I think that there is more pink than brown, but the brown stands out when this fabric is among other pink fabrics. Because of this, I generally consider this fabric brown.

Sugar Snap by Melissa Averinos

Sugar Snap, originally uploaded by jenib320.

This fabric is made up of ivory, two shades of pink, orange, and two shades of turquoise. the background color in this fabric helps first identify this fabric as ivory. However, the accents are bright and pretty dominating, which leads me to place this fabric in the multi-colored section of my stash.

Weekends by Erin Mcmorris

Weekends, originally uploaded by jenib320.

This fabric has tons of different colors. Two shades of pink, two shades of burnt orange, gray, ivory, green, and white. The dominating colors are pink and burnt orange, but there are so many different colors that I categorize this as multi-colored as well.

Challenge Fabrics

Challenge Fabrics, originally uploaded by jenib320.

Now it's your turn. If you'd like, give these four fabrics a try! Share your opinions in the comments. You can guess the color or type of fabric, or both.

The next post in this series is on Fabric Folding.