{"id":11607,"date":"2025-11-29T16:10:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T23:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/?p=11607"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:12:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:12:19","slug":"the-stash-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/the-stash-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stash Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now is a good time to review your stash and see what hues and values may be missing, before the holidays fly by and the Winter Sewing Season begins!

Someone recently asked me about how to proceed in developing a color palette of fabrics, and I thought it might be useful to offer some ideas.

You probably have plenty of fabrics in your favorite color. If you re-organize your stash once a year, this will become obvious. My favorite color is a rich Amethyst Purple. (A jeweltone) Over the years I have expanded my purple stash to include:

Dark Purple – like Deep Eggplant
Pastel and Midtone Purple – Lilac and Lavender
Desaturated Purple – like Mauve
Cool Purple – like Iris
Warm Purple – like Plum

However we need more than one color so the next step might be to review the analogous colors – the adjacent colors on the color wheel<\/a><\/strong>:

Blue and Turquoise
Magenta and Orchid

Then add a pop of a complementary color.
Yellow is opposite Purple on the color wheel, so this is the perfect accent color. Every successful quilt needs a ‘pop’ accent color!

Explore different values and different saturation levels of the complementary color. Lay out your palette of favorite colors, and then audition your potential complementary colors to see which color combinations ‘sing’ to you.

I like to push my accent color just a little bit one way or the other, so I might choose a Marigold or a Citrus\/Lime-Yellow.

Eventually you can work your way around the color wheel and develop a collection of darks and lights, warm and cool versions, hot brights and soft de-saturated choices.

Developing a Neutral Palette of Black and White, Gray and Brown, etc. helps you to see the rest of your rainbow color palette as you audition possible color combinations.

Developing a color palette in your stash takes time<\/a><\/strong>, and you will find your taste changes over time. You will notice that you have preferences for solids, blender prints, analogous prints, multicolor prints, batiks or hand-dyes. You will become more adventurous in choosing your accent colors. You will discover combinations that had never occurred to you before. That is the fun, and the joy of developing your stash…and how glorious is it one day to think of a new color adventure and everything you dream of is right there at your fingertips!

Well anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing for 30+ years. Have fun preparing for the post-holiday quilting season!


Sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Subscribe to my artist blog here.<\/a><\/strong> Most recent article – Pro Tips for BERNINA Q 20

Travel\/Lecture Dates:
Dec 10 – Canadian Quilt Association – Zoom Lecture – Intl Quilt Trends
Feb 2 – SAQA Europe\/Middle East – Zoom Lecture
Feb 18-21 – QuiltCon – Raleigh NC
Apr 26 – May 1 – Alegre Retreat, Gateway CO
May 16 – New England Quilt Museum, Soul Stories Artist Reception


Visit eQuilter’s Instagram<\/a><\/strong> and Pinterest<\/a><\/strong> pages for Color and Design ideas.

See Luana’s Artist Blog<\/a><\/strong>, Flickr Photo Pages<\/a><\/strong> for travel images, comment on our blog<\/a><\/strong>, or follow us on Facebook<\/a><\/strong>.

Check out our Video pages<\/a><\/strong> for interviews and show reviews.<\/p>\nShare Post:<\/strong>
\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now is a good time to review your stash and see what hues and values may be missing, before the holidays fly by and the Winter Sewing Season begins! Someone recently asked me about how to proceed in developing a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11609,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11607\/revisions\/11609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}