Ocean Fabric Pull

A few weeks back I wrote about a request from my daughter to make a baby quilt for one of her friends.

In the post, I wrote about buying a pattern that had 400 pieces in it and figuring out a way to simplify the quilt…..REALLY simplify it!!

At the time, I had done a small fabric pull…..

I left that post by saying that I was going to buy some solids to add to this.

Then I added a LOT of other fabrics so the final pull looked like this…..

Okay…..this needs some organization!!

I pulled out my “Value Finder” and got busy…..

If you don’t know, a Value Finder is a filter that takes the color out of the picture and replaces it with red (or green, depending on which filter you use).

Mine is an older version that isn’t available anymore, but you might be interested in this one….

These can be purchased on Amazon….

You can also look at a black-and-white photo of the fabric and get a similar result…..

I started out by pulling all of the dark fabrics and, using the value finder, ordering them by value…..

That complete, I was ready to move on to the medium-valued fabrics. I actually found it easier to pull out the light-colored fabrics, leaving the medium shades.

Man, I love some of these fabrics!!!

Finally, I arranged the light color fabrics…..

In each case, I initially arranged them the way that I thought they should go, and would then look thru the Value Finder to see if I was right.

It was interesting to see which fabrics I placed incorrectly!!

Now that they were sorted, I was able to look at all the fabrics I had picked….

And, here they are with the Value-Finder attached…..

I was pleased with the range in values and colors, but I needed to trim some more before I started.

I decided to pull any fabric that I couldn’t get a 30-inch strip out of. There is no reason to put a seam in if I don’t have to.

I did keep two fabrics that weren’t 30 inches wide. Both were just too great to leave out!

I also needed to pick my Sky Fabrics. I am thinking of five fabrics for the sky, and am looking at the lighter end of my fabrics and obviously focusing on blue ones…..

I know that there are six fabrics here but that blue & yellow just HAS to be part of the mix.

I think that these will do for now.