Please Note: Links to etsy products in this post are affiliate links.
If you find it challenging to find matching lining fabrics, and you like Robert Kaufman's Kona solids, consider gettting one of these Kona color chart panels. I haven't had mine long and have already consulted it numerous times.
If you aren't familiar with Kona it is the most popular solid fabric for quilters. There are more than 365 colors and it's just really great cotton fabric made from long staple cotton which gives it substantial feel. It's wonderful for quilts and also lovely for lining bags and accessories.
Back before the pandemic started, like a lot of people I was already buying most of my fabric online. But I still went out to the shops to find matches to use as lining.
Obviously, that stopped being an option last year so I started guessing which fabrics might pair well with the other fabrics in my stash. Let's just say, some mistakes were made...
The first fabric I ran into trouble with is the lovely Rifle Paper Co. cotton canvas used to make the bag in the photo above (a medium size Grocery Bag, BTW). This fabric has lots of different colors and it seemed like surely it would be no trouble to find a good match in my stash, but nope, it didn't quite work out that way.
Then when this fabric came and I saw the lovely muted colors that don't really exist in my stash, it was obvious a better strategy for lining fabrics needed to be devised.
In the last year a few yard of Kona have made it to my mailbox and I was already eyeing the color chart as a potential way to stop me from making a lot of fabric buying mistakes.
When the time came to get the job done and buy the color chart, Bobbie Lou's Fabric Factory on etsy had them available. I've shopped with her before, so into my cart it went (along with two more color guesses--one of which turned out ok). Bobbie Lou seems to be taking an etsy break now, but you can find the color chart on her website here.
If you are interested in getting one of these too and want to order on etsy, BrewStitched sells this color chart panel here. I've shopped with BrewStitched a few times and it's always been a good experience.
