This month we're back to a colour palette picked purely for the photo. I love this picture and thought the dog looks so elegant with his paws crossed and posing for the camera. The colours definitely were a challenge for quilts, but I think they turned out surprisingly beautiful in a more rugged way. Maybe these would be ideas for those of us trying to make some more masculine quilts.
But do check them out yourself below (and give this good boy or girl a quick scratch behind the ears on the way by).
Image courtesy of sarahreneaclark.com
Fabric swatches for October 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. Not all brands have the same variety of shades of every colour, so you'll see some variance in the brands I list here depending on the current palette.
- Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton: Black, Charcoal, Smoke, Taupe, Mocha
- Northcott Colorworks: Black, Moon Shadow, Concrete, Cafe O Lait, Mahogany
- Moda Bella Solids: Silky Soft Black, American Blue, Nickel, Coral Rose, Moda U Brown
- Andover Fabrics Century Solids: Black, Gunmetal, Whisper, Clay, Cocoa
- Art Gallery PURE Solids: Deep Black, Nocturnal, Monet, Cinnamon, Chocolate
- HEX codes, to look up other brands: #050205, #443944, #B5A0A2, #A8786D, #652E15
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
This was a challenge, but not as much as I had thought. Turns out that ombre gradients work in just about any colour, even though I'm not exactly used to doing them in black and brown.
First up we have
Dancing Hearts, a quilt I like to play with every time I have a gradient. And since I figured these would probably be seen as more masculine quilts, I really wanted to do a heart quilt to get away from the more strictly geometric "quilts for men" roundups usually seen on Pinterest. As always, having a 5-colour palette and a 6-colour quilt meant I had to add an additional colour and I chose to add it in the brown spectrum. The background is Kona Oyster.
For
Bar Code, I used the same 6 colours as above, but lightened the background a bit to Kona Snow. Here I tried out both a light and a dark version, using Kona Black as the background for the second try. I did have to lighten the greys a bit so they would stand out from the black, since the darker grey is pretty close to the black. I do love how these two turned out.
My third try was
Confetti, a quilt I've been playing with digitally a lot lately. It's technically a scrap buster and my original one was "everything except blacks and browns", so it was fun to play with exactly those two colours. I also added an extra light brown to balance out the main fabrics, and used Kona Oyster again for the background.
Ripple & Swirl is one of the easiest quilts you can make, and would be great for charity quilts. Since charities are always looking for more masculine quilts I think this one could be a great option. I first tried to do one line of triangles with the blacks and greys, and the other with the browns, but that muddled up the lines. So this is my second version, using the darks from both colours in one line, and the lights (plus an extra light fabric to up the contrast) in the second line. Now the two lines show up as they should.
What do you think? Would you try out this colour palette in a future quilt? Pin the image below to your inspiration file!
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