January 2026 Colour Inspiration

I'm getting back into colour inspiration blog posts, and we're starting off with this yummy inspiration image.

Looking outside right now where I am, a hot chocolate and some yummy cookies would not go amiss ;-)

Fabric swatches for January 2026

Having colours on the screen as inspiration is one thing, but as quilters we need to be able to find them in fabric collections as well. I'm using the QuiltySolid app to put together fabric collections of some common solids brands.

• Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton: Waterfall, Baby Blue, Eggshell, Silver, Iron
• Northcott Colorworks: Turquoise, Cloud Nine, Alabaster, Silver Fox, Glacier
• Moda Bella Solids: Little Boy Blue, Summer Sky, Baby Yellow, Silky Zen Grey, French Blue
• Andover Century Solids: Pool, Sky, Ivory, Cloud, Moonlight, 
• Art Gallery Pure Solids: Aero Blue, Tranquil Waters, Chamomile, Celestial, Nebula
• HEX codes, to look up other brands: 69B3D5, ABDCED, F5E5BC, DAE2E9, 9CB2C1

Always check these in person, though. The app gives the closest colours by hue, saturation, and value, to the HEX code entered, but they may not look quite right together in person. Substituting a different shade for one of the fabrics might work better.

Mockups of real quilt patterns

First up is Tumbled Love, which is a pattern I am currently reformatting, so I had to try out the colours on this scrappy table runner.

Bar Code is always a favourite of mine, especially for colour palettes that have two distinct colour groups. In this case, since the inspiration only had five colours and the quilt requires six for the bars, plus a background, I added a darker grey to make a group of grey bars, and then added the yellow to the blue bars.

I also wanted to see what adding an additional blue, and using the yellow with the greys would do. It's a very subtle shift but I like how that turned out, too. 

Pie in the Sky would be a great pattern to use with prints rather than solids. The pies are fairly large pieces that would show off a medium to large print quite nicely.

And my last mockup is the Confetti quilt, which is actually a scrappy quilt that can be as wild or as coordinated as you like. It works really well in this colour scheme and I am envisioning this in print scraps of all similar colours, having a bit more "extra" than just the five solids from the colour inspo above. I think it would look really sharp, and would make a perfect shower gift if made in the baby size (the one shown here is the throw size).