NB: Edyta Sitar’s Thousand Oaks quilt pattern is available on her website or in her book, Patches of Blue.
I’m a collage artist and I found choosing the fabrics for this appliqué project almost exactly like composing the materials for a paper or multi media collage.
You need 9 fat quarters worth of fabrics for the appliqués. From each fabric you cut oak leaves, reel, wreaths and small leaves and then you can combine elements from the different fabrics for each block.
After auditioning a few fabrics I settled on navy blue, mid blue and and teal (medium and light) as my main colours. I tried a blue on white print and it just didn’t read well enough as a bold, graphic element for my taste. It would be nice to do a more muted version — faded, almost.
Reel: Laundry Basket Quilts Olive Branch in Cadet, Andover
Wreaths: cream vine on very dark blue –fat quarter, by Aliye
Small leaves: Grunge Basics in Delft
The only other featured fabric is a dark blue Crackle.
Reel: Laundry Basket Quilts Olive branch in Powder Blue, Andover
Wreaths: No name white polka dot on dark blue, from Walmart
Small leaves: No name navy and white geometric print, also from Walmart
I like the scrappy squares of low volume fabrics that make up the background. For my own choices I combined quite a few inexpensive no-name cotton prints with a few nicer ones: Vanilla Grunge, Laundry Basket Quilt’s Canopy Limestone from Sitar’s Sonoma line for Andover and my favourite of all, Dictionary Burlap Cream from Adornit’s Farmhouse Fields.