Create an Ombre Quilt

When I started the Maggie Pearl quilt along, I thought about creating an ombre design with the new Warp and Weft Moonglow fabrics by Ruby Star Society. I love those fabrics and their deeper, moody hues and making the colors flow into one another really felt like a good idea. 

I really loved how this would turn out, and it seems like a lot of you thought that too because I've had so many requests for this! So I thought I'd write up a little tutorial for how to create this design without needing exact directions, that way you can turn any quilt like this into an ombre design. 

I've created this look a number of times with some of my other patterns. I did one with the Ramona quilt I made when I was releasing that pattern. This time I just used a layer cake! 

And with Madeline, I did the same, although that took a good bit more thought and planning. But I lined up my strips in an order I thought I'd like, and then cut some "short" and some "tall" from each color to try to make the colors flow a bit. Again, this was probably my most complicated ombre compared to how the pattern is written. 

You can see in the photo above how I tried to kind of fill in as I went. This was my first attempt at an ombre quilt, so it took some playing to get it where I liked.

But for the Maggie Pearl, it's a great example of how you can simply pull a selection of colors and line them up in a ROY G. BIV order, like a rainbow. You don't have to be fussy about how many of each color you have. This isn't an attempt to have a super structured quilt layout, but how to lean into the colorwheel and let the colors move from one into the next. 

Again, with the Madeline, that's how I pulled my fabrics and ordered them. Then I could see the potential direction I wanted my ombre to flow.

I mocked up this Maggie Pearl using those Moonglow Warp and Weft fabrics, and knowing I'd get 3 blocks per color, I arranged them in an ombre effect, flowing from one corner to the opposite. 

With most fabric pulls you can achieve this, using the order of the rainbow to arrange your fabrics. This photo of Warp and Weft Moonglow line helps you even put them in color order if you're having a hard time seeing it! 

It's not that you need every color of the rainbow! You could create an ombre with just a few favorite colors and play around with different hues! It's meant to be fun and I hope you'll give it a try and see what happens! I hope this helps on your next quilt, maybe even with your Maggie Pearl!