Modern Patchwork: Selecting Fabric for a Metropolis Quilt

This is part of a year-long series of posts about the quilts from Modern Patchwork. I'm highlighting a different quilt each month, and will be remaking either a regular size or mini quilt version of each of the book quilts. Click here to see all of the posts.

Today, I'm going to walk through my fabric choices for the Metropolis quilt and mini quilts in Modern Patchwork with the hope that it will help you to make fabric choices for your own quilt or mini quilt.

Each block is made with 9 pieces (aka Block Units) each cut from a different fabric.

In the big quilt, I started with 3 multicolor prints and then chose 6 coordinating solid and almost solid fabrics. In this case, I divided the 9 Block Units into 3 groups:

• Block Units 1 and 2 are the background, for which I used cool sea green solid fabrics.
• Block Units 3, 5, 7, and 9 are the horizontal bars, for which I used warm gold and brown fabrics.
• Block Units 4, 6, and 8 are the vertical bars, for which I used multicolor print fabrics.

Note: Half of the blocks in the quilt are rotated 90°.

In this mini quilt, I used a complementary color scheme or orange and blue with all of the vertical bars (including the background) made with orange fabrics and the horizontal bars made with blue fabrics:

• Block Units 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 are the vertical bars, for which I used orange fabrics.
• Block Units 3, 5, 7, and 9 are the horizontal bars, for which I used blue fabrics.

To keep things interesting, I used one orange print that included a little bit of blue.

In this mini quilt, I used gray solids for the background and violet solids and black and white prints for horizontal and vertical bars. Unlike the other two examples, I didn't divide up the fabrics based on whether they would be running horizontally or vertically in the finished block.

• Block Units 1 and 2 are the background, for which I used gray solid fabrics.
• Block Units 3, 4, 5, and 9 are made with violet solid fabrics.
• Block Units 6, 7, and 8 are made with black and white print fabrics.

If you would like to make a 75" x 75" Metropolis mini quilt, the yardage requirements for each fabric are on Page 7 of Modern Patchwork. The yardage requirements include fabric for making 9 blocks for the front of the quilt and the giant block for the quilt back.

If you would like to make a single 15" block you will need 9 Block Units in the following sizes:

• Block Unit 1 = 6-3/4" x 11-3/4" 
• Block Unit 2 = 4-3/4" x 11-3/4" 
• Block Unit 3 = 1-3/4" x 11"
• Block Unit 4 = 3-1/2" x 12-1/2"
• Block Unit 5 = 2" x 13-1/2"
• Block Unit 6 = 1-1/2" x 13-1/2"
• Block Unit 7 = 2" x 14"
• Block Unit 8 = 1=2-1/2" x 14-1/2"
• Block Unit 9 = 2" x 15-1/2"

Instructions for piecing the blocks are on Pages 11-12 of Modern Patchwork. The mini quilts were made with a single block bordered by 2-1/2" strips of neutral solid fabric to create negative space.

This vintage print is the inspiration for my Metropolis project. 

ETA: My travel obligations this summer are crazy and, rather than rush the finish of this project, I'm going to show the last two posts to you when I'm back in town at the beginning of August. I'm so very sorry for the delay!