There are a lot of very colorful quilts out in the world. Who doesn’t love bright colorful quilts? But there is also beauty in simplicity. Now you can simplify with your piecing or your quilting. But you can also simplify the numbers of colors in your quilt and keep the complicated piecing or fancy quilting. Check out these tricolored quilts that our longarm renters have finished.

Blue, Black, and White

This is Karen’s tricolored longarm rental certification quilt. She pieced it overnight using only five fabrics. Isn’t it fun? Besides the simplicity of the color palette, I like the simplicity of her quilt design. She quilted this with Star Dance, a great pantograph design from Barbara Becker. It is a nice and open design for those that don’t like tightly quilted designs. The open nature of the design also makes it easier to quilt for those that may be new to quilting. Because there is space between the lines, being a little off will not make any visible difference at all. The stars make this quilt design very versatile to use as it looks great on children’s quilts, patriotic quilts, and many others.

Black, White, and Yellow

Brenda brought this gorgeous little quilt with fabrics from the “Bee Joyful” line by Deb Strain and Moda Fabrics. All the fabrics are black, white, gray, and yellow which essentially keeps it tricolored. Brenda chose to use our design boards or groovy boards. We don’t sell the boards, but we do have ten or so that our longarm renters can use. What you see here is the spiral board. Technically not circles, this would be very difficult to replicate with rulers and impossible to do without. Because of the ribbed circles, they kind of look like the top view of old fashioned beehives, don’t you think?

Red, White, and Gray

Carol quilted this simple alternating nine patch tricolored quilt during her rental certification class. She came with a friend so they were able to take turns on each other’s quilts. Carol chose the spiral design board for her quilt and her friend chose a pantograph. By trading, they were both able to try two different styles of quilting, while only have one style on each quilt. I thought that was pretty clever!

Black, White, and Gray

Falicia wanted to make a gift for her brother who is a big Iowa Hawkeyes fan. The pattern of the quilt is simple, it’s her tricolored fabric that sets it apart. The back is also pieced to mimic the stripe that you see on the sleeves of the football jersey.

Falicia wanted a quilting design that would not add any distraction to the fabric, so she chose Square Spiral by Keryn Emmerson. This design has regular wavy lines that just add wonderful texture to a quilt!

I hope you see that simplifying your design by simply limiting your colors can be quite effective! I still love colorful quilts, but two or three colors really can be enough. What quilts have you made that were tricolored? We’d all love to see! Connect with us on Facebook and Instagram, or join our online community in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse. Hope to see you there!