Using EQ8 with Pinterest to Create a Quilt Palette: AQS Letter Home, 5 Baby Quilt Options

AQS Letter Home Quilt, Original Colorway

Have you seen the AQS Letter Home QAL?  This one-block quilt caught my eye as I was hunting for quick but interesting baby quilt ideas.  Although the QAL (quilt-along) instructions are for a 60" x 60" finished quilt, this easily becomes a 42" x 42" quilt by shrinking the block size to 8" and adding a 2" border.  I do like the original AQS colorway (shown above), but since I was resizing the quilt in my EQ8 quilt design software anyway I thought I'd experiment with some alternative color palettes to see if I can come up with something I like even better.

Although I have thousands of images of quilts on my Pinterest boards, those are not my go-to boards for color inspiration.  Instead, I go to my Favorite Color Combinations board, where I've pinned everything from illustration art to interior design photos -- any image I come across with great color combinations that catch my eye gets pined to this board.

In the photo above, I have my EQ8 quilt design software open on the left side of my screen, and a browser window open to my Favorite Color Combinations Pinterest board open on the right hand side.  

I've set my Default Fabric Palette in EQ8 to contain all of the colors of Kona Solid fabrics, so I'm designing with actual fabric right out of the gate rather than just coloring a quilt and then having to find fabric matches afterwards.  With an image on the right side of my screen to use as a visual reference, I can try on all sorts of different color palettes until I find one that I like for my quilt.  Here's the inspiration photo I was using to pull a color palette for version of this quilt seen in the previous photo:

Here's my EQ8 quilt design, inspired by the Pinterest floral print:

Option 1: Multicolor Medley

Since I'm doing this in EQ8 software, I can generate a fairly accurate yardage calculation even though I've changed the size of the quilt and changed the number of different fabrics as well.  I really love this version.  The background fabric is Kona Wasabi, along with Kona Snow, Harbor, Tomato, Seascape, Balsam, Lupine, Parrot, Black, and Velvet.  This would be really fun to make.

But I came up with several other versions that I also really like, using more limited color palettes to stay truer to the look of the original Letter Home quilt:

Option 2: Snow with Aloe, Delft Dresden Blue, Ochre and Black

This version uses Kona Snow for the background, along with Kona Aloe, Delft, Dresden Blue, Ochre, and Black.  The color palette was inspired by this Mid-Century Chickadee image, designed by Stepanic on Spoonflower:

Or there's this version, using Kona Grellow for the background along with Kona Teal Blue, Breakers, and Black:

Option 3: Grellow with Teal Blue, Breakers and Black

The palette for this one was inspired by this cute poison dart frog print by La-Lm:

Here's another favorite, using Kona Bone for the background fabric along with Kona Grasshopper, Indigo, and Kona Wasabi:

Option 4: Bone with Grasshopper, Indigo and Wasabi

That colorway was pulled from this fabulous digital collage by Wouter van der Sluijs  entitled Three Little Birds:

One more contender:

Option 5: Coal with Natural, Yarrow and Flame

The fabrics for this version are Kona Coal for the background with Kona Natural, Yarrow, and Flame.  Palette inspiration came from this Mod Birds design (The Pinterest attribution is Mid-Century Modern Mod Birds by London Dewey, but this design is no longer listed on that designer's page):

So now my dilemma is that I love ALL of these versions!  I might just have to make more than one of them...  But which one should I make FIRST?

I'm linking up today's post with:

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter