Fabric selection for the EPP blocks

I thought I'd post about how I make the Valse Brillante blocks, starting with how I select my fabrics.

I started off with a couple of ancient layer cakes, one batik and the other in regular quilting cotton.  These are old and I have no idea what they were called. 

Colors in both layer cakes are teals, turquoise, cream and browns.  So here's the first block in the batiks.  Then I started to pull from the regular layer cake:

And in the process, I found that lovely green in the leaves.  So now I have another color  place to go.

Some pretty green and, ta da, a bit of orange/yellow something or other.

Well this one has the brown, the teal/green and oranges.  I'm not sure about keeping this one, but since this is going to have tons of blocks, I think it will be OK.

This one has the browns, greens and creams that are touched with a bit of turq and very pale orange/yellow.  I like this one a lot.

These are the next two colorways.  This is how I love to work:  I find a basic palette and then wander off into many directions.  Some of these hexies will work; some won't, but it doesn't much matter.  If nothing else, I'll have a mug rug or two out of them.

One of the joys of layer cakes is that you get an entire palette of colors to choose from.  Then you can go to your stash and find fabrics that will live with or complement your original color scheme.  Most will work, some won't.  It's fun.  Why don't you try it?  You have nothing to lose except having a pile of fabric around, which you can then put away.

One caveat, though:  Just because they live well with each other when they are on top of each other doesn't mean that the final product will be what you imagined.  The size of the pieces and where they are placed have a major impact on how you see the colors.  That's the fun of it.

Tomorrow we'll talk about how I actually construct this block.