Background fill

This is a friend's quilt.  It has large negative space.  I have been putting framed squares in and I am happy with the look, but I am not sure how I will do the background around the frames.

I opened the pic in Microsoft Paint to try out some ideas.  - very rough sketches with a mouse, but I am still undecided.  Off to consult with a friend....

Choosing Colors For Quilts - Good Fortune

Someone recently posted on Quiltingboard Forum asking how people choose colors for their quilts.  I thought I would share my response here.  Of course there are many ways to select colors and at one time I thought about making a few videos on the subject. 

What I used for the Good Fortune quilt (Bonnie Hunter Mystery 2018) was a focus fabric but not used in the quilt.  Bonnie's scrappy quilts use color families - several shades of one color.  She gives out the colors for the next mystery around the end of Oct.   She chose red, orange, blue, green and neutrals.  I didn't want to use orange so I went shopping for a fabric that combined 4 fabrics that I liked because I couldn't think of what I wanted.

This had several colors

I took this fat quarter around the shop and picked out fat quarters in 4 colors from it until I found four I liked together. then I pulled fabric from stash and shopping that went with my color choices.

 The final quilt didn't use the focus fabric.

Free Motion quilting on tshirt quilt

I quilted a friend's tshirt quilt.  Free motion - flowers, hearts, curls.  Sometimes on the shirts the thread sinks in so much it looks like there are skipped stitches.