The other day I went to my local quilt shop and asked if they carried solids to which they responded "uh
no" in a judging way that made me feel like I had just broken some quilting law or committed a major quilting faux pas. Well, as it turned out, they did have some solids in neutral tones of white, snow, cream, bone, toffee, brown, black, etc. I picked up some Kona Solid white because I was planning to use it for my
Love Pinwheel quilt and didn't let them convince me I needed a tone-on tone instead. I love solids! In fact, one of the first quilts that caught my eye when I first started looking around was this quilt:
I love the mixture of colors and simple, yet (in my opinion) stunning design. In my opinion solids are far from boring! I am a big fan of
Cherry House Quilts and just love the new book,
City Quilts. I still haven't picked it up because I thought I might be getting it as a gift for my
birthday but didn't so I will be picking it up soon! This one from the City Quilts book is called City lights:
It really reminds me of a sky scrapper! I really love this quilt called The Tempest. I remember
her first post about this quilt where she described how she was trying to get a good shot of it down by the water but in the process of backing up on the dock to get the photo just right, she fell into the water! That definitely sounds like something I would do. Don't worry, she was ok and so was the quilt. Purple is probably my favorite color (it's really hard for me to pick just one color) and this quilt
sings to me.
Even though solids are frowned upon by more traditional quilters (and apparently my local quilt shop), they are very popular among modern quilters alone or in combination with modern prints. For example:
I used
Kona Solids for the backs and bindings for all but one of the
wedding attendant quilts and I used them in the
I Do quilt I am working on for Matt. I also used some solid orange (leftover from Matt's I Do quilt) for some of the
blocks I made for
Rainbow Around the Block. Kona Solids come in a huge variety of colors (221 colors right now!), are nice quality, extremely versatile, and reasonably priced. I used a birthday gift certificate from my Dad and step-mom Laurie to pick up a few of the new-ish Kona Solid fat quarter bundles from the
Fat Quarter Shop (discount code from
RetailMeNot.com) in pink, purple, and green:
Aren't they cute?! I am planning on using the pink in my girly guest bedroom, the purple in my more masculine guest bedroom, and the green in the master bedroom. I also picked up some
Kona solid charms and a jelly roll at the
Missouri Star Quilt Company when I won their YouTube.com gift certificate giveaway.
In addition to the fat quarter bundles and pre-cuts, I also recently bought a Kona color card. I had such a hard time finding one in stock somewhere but finally managed to snag the last one from Purl Soho.
This card is perfect for me because I do most of my fabric shopping online. Now I will be able to buy matching solid coordinates for my quilts without having to worry so much about the color on the screen being different in person (that happened with the I Do quilt for Matt). I literally scoured the internet trying to find this card. They are not in stock anywhere at the moment but in addition to
PurlSoho.com where I bought mine, I also saw them on
Etsy.com,
Hancocks-Paducah.com and
PinkChalkFabrics.com. All of these places said they have the cards on order and they will be shipping soon. In my opinion this is a must have tool for anyone who wants to incorporate solids into their stash.
Check out Kona solids at your local JoAnn's or call your local quilt shop to see if they carry any. I think you'll agree after you use them that they are a really nice option to have in your stash. I will let you know how well it works to have the color card around once I've had a chance to use it more. I think it's going to be a really awesome tool!
Happy Quilting!
