Tone It Down Quilt: Choosing Fabrics

Tone It Down by Lissa Alexander

It’s December 23 and I’m counting down the days to 2014! Think I can get in a couple more quilts before the New Year? I should probably focus on ones that are already in progress but coming off the organizational high of my destash sale, I am in the mood for playing with fabric and starting something new. There’s a beautiful quilt by Lissa Alexander called Tone It Down in the February 2014 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. It uses traditional piecing and a “modern” low-volume background. Read about Lissa’s inspiration for the quilt {here}. APQ is hosting a quilt-along for this project and I decided it would be a good sewing project for the holidays (chain piecing friendly = lots of audiobooks + mugs of cocoa).

I pulled fabrics for the quilt yesterday, using this retro-inspired Alice Apple felt applique art as my color palette:

Here are my fabric picks:

A variety of pinks for the main blocks across the quilt (pink, orange, and red in the original)

Mustard + aqua + orange + grass green for the secondary pattern of circles

And a big variety of low volume prints for the background.

This quilt pattern is very scrap friendly so I’ve pulled lots of things from my scrap basket to mix in with fat quarters and yardage from my stash. I want to make the mustard color more prominent so I’ll probably find a print or solid in that range to use for binding.

Are you going to quilt along with us? You can find the magazine at most craft stores or purchase a digital copy {here}.