Selecting Your Fabric

As we work towards beginning our Gypsy Wife Quilt the first step is selecting our fabric. In the video, Gigi goes through her fabric selection process for her quilt.

Reminder: Don't get overwhelmed it's one piece at a time. We are all in this together.

From Gigi:

1. My inspiration fabric is a busy print with 12 colors and geometric prints mixed with florals. I’ve selected a few more bold colored florals and other prints because in looking at what other quilters have done I like the way these fabrics stand out.

2. Next I gathered fabric that was not as busy: solids, stripes, polka dots, small geometric shapes all of various colors, lights, darks and mediums. These will be used to piece blocks and help the bolder fabrics stand out. Contrast is good and kind of necessary for most of the gypsy wife blocks. I tried to get fabrics that looked good.

3. Some of the filler blocks are great for a fussy cut novelty fabric. Fussy cut is when you cut a specific spot of fabric to show or target in a quilt block. It works well with a square in a square block with the middle square being a fussy cut item…a flower or butterfly something like that. There are a lot of square in a square blocks in this quilt (around 47). It may be fun to fussy cut some of them. Since we are going to be working in sections we will not be making them all at once. But you can if that is easier for you. The square in a square block is also called the economy block if you are looking it up online.

4. Strips. The fabric for the strips varies from 12”-65.5” Some are 1” wide and some are 1.5” wide. I’ve seen so many beautiful Gypsy Wife Quilts with black and white strips, grays, blues, greens… it’s up to you and what makes your quilt blocks stand out. I’m going to cut more than I need I’m sure but I really want a big variety for my quilt as I am trying to go more scrappy.

There is a lot to consider when approaching the Gypsy Wife Quilt fabric selection. Whether you are going totally scrappy or sticking within a specific color palette, having some general guidelines may help you later when creating your blocks.

There are ideas not rules. Go with what makes you happy. We will be working in sections which will help with your color placement. It’s so helpful to be able to see what is going to be next to each other as opposed to just creating blocks and when you go to construct the quilt realize you have too many reds in one area and no reds in another area.

When buying fabric try and buy in ¼ yard cuts so that you can cut the strips used throughout the quilt. Know that some of the strips are going to be less than the width of fabric (WOF) and a few will be more than the width of fabric. The blocks in the gypsy wife quilt use only a bit of fabric for each piece in the block so the ¼ yard will get you a strip or two and still have plenty for piecing.

Here are some of the fabric types I am collecting for the gypsy wife quilt:

Fabric for strips and some blocks

Inspiration fabric

I will post pictures of my fabrics on Thursday, June 28th, 2018. Also please look forward to our new schedule for the quilt along to be posted soon.

Happy quilting!

GiGi

Resources and Tips

Below is a list of resources and tips gathered from the quilting army and many hours of reading what others have done on the internet and what has worked for past quilters..

Picking out a color plan is difficult and some people like to plan what colors are going in where. Thankfully, Pink Door Fabrics has a page that allows you to color and plan your fabric arrangement. You can find the page here and for the really organized there are helpful layout charts here.

Storage is important with this quilt as there are many pieces and if you decide to cut ahead it's going to be important to package and label them correctly.

There are a ton of strips needed to assemble this quilt, therefore many quilters have decided to cut some of their strips when they have free time so at the end there won't be as many to do. A great organizing cutting chart can be found here and another can be found on a google doc here.

If there is a block that you just cannot get the hang of feel free to switch it out with an easier block of the same size using this site: http://quilterscache.com/.

Check out these sites for info: