In my first blog post as one of the EQ Gurus (The EQ Dozen) I selected some blocks, almost at random, to use in a series of virtual quilt designs.

Think they might look a little more unified if I take all the colour away.

Without the distraction of the colours from the block library I can see that the blocks don’t need a huge selection of fabrics … probably six will be enough.

Next step is to actually choose some fabrics.

For this series I feel an urge to use purple as the main colour, yellow as the background, with some green … and maybe a splash of pink or orange.

I have never limited my choice of fabrics in real quilts to one range of fabrics. It is fun to see what goes with what. There are often many ranges in the more popular colours of the season, which means there is a bigger choice of prints when you mix and match ranges.

I will need a light or bright yellow for the background, some mediums and at least one dark in the purples, with a few gradients between the medium and dark, and some bright lime green for the splash of contrast.

Shopping for virtual fabric is so much fun. Electric Quilt comes with a really well stocked fabric library, and you can use as much of as many of those fabrics as you wish in your virtual quilts.

I do the same in the EQ library as I do in a real fabric store. I pick everything off the shelf I think might work. In the fabric store I sort the rolls into the must haves, might need and the others go back on the shelf, then have to make some serious decisions about how much of how many fabrics I really need to buy. For the virtual quilts I just take all of those which might be useful and put them in the project file.

For this virtual project I have just a few colours in mind, so I limited my choice … to nearly 200 fabrics!

Even with this many fabrics in the sketch book I still find I often have to go on a virtual shopping expedition to find something to add a touch of class, colour or contrast to the current project.

When I start placing fabrics within the blocks I will be looking at contrast more than colour.

One of those yellows will be the background, but it also has to lighter than all the other fabrics used in the block for the effect I want.

Do you think I have a good selection of fabrics with enough colour and enough contrast?

Next step … adding the fabrics to the blocks. So watch for my next tutorial. In the meantime you can check out the virtual quilt I show each day on Virtual Quilter.