Color Challenged
Perhaps because I learned to quilt from my grandmother and she was a great proponent of scrap quilts. You make beauty from what you have on hand. And she did. Her quilts were colorful, yet very tempered and artful in their presentation. They didn't look like she just pulled any ol' scrap from the heap - because she didn't. She had a great knack for seeing line and pattern using a multitude of colors to enhance the overall beauty of a piece. None of her finished quilts looked like an unruly mess. Somehow, I didn't get that gene.
When I do a quilt my very first stumbling block is always picking the colors. I envy quilters who find this part of the quilting process joy because for me it's a headache. It seems I fall back on what I know - scraps are good, you can never go wrong with red, white and blue, and two color quilts don't go out of style. That's it. That's the extent of my quilting color repertoire.
I've tried learning a bit from a color wheel, but in all honestly I don't quite get that either. I must be thick.
So, I want to start the Love Entwined quilt but I'm having problems picking my fabrics. I'm thinking dark blue, grey, yellow and some green. Does this sound icky? (icky is a technical term....)
It could work, I find with selecting colour choices that you have to love what you are going to work with. Maybe put some scraps of the colours you want to use on a board and leave them there for a few days then take another look and see if you still like them.
ReplyDeleteGood idea Pip. Living with my choices for a while might make all the difference.
DeleteI think the key is to make sure that every color represented has very lights to mediums and even very darks. That seems to help me a a lot. Color wheels don't do much for me either.:)
ReplyDeleteTrue Audrey. After I separate my groups by color, I'll separate by tone.
DeleteIt doesn't sound icky to me.... Make sure that your greens stay in the yellow line, and vary the values, dark and light, and it should be fine! If these are the colours you like, go with it, because that is how your quilt becomes a part of you.
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Thanks Jane. I haven't settled on what tone of green yet. I don't have alot of yellow-y ones. I'm more of a deep forest green girl myself. But I'm going to put all of them together as Pip suggested and stare at them for a few days and see how it goes.
DeleteI'm not good at picking out colors either, but I find it helpful to audition the fabrics. Put them together, and see if I like it. Then I take one out, one at a time, to see if losing that one helps or hurt the whole. Then I add another fabric, again to see if it helps or hurts the whole. Once I have decided, I let the collection sit for a whole, and look at it in different times of the day to see if they play together. Sometimes, I get the magical "that's it!" feeling, and if I don't, I find that I need to keep playing until I get that feeling. That's when I know I will be truly happy with the quilt and will be able to follow it through to completion. Of course, with a quilt like this one, you will be able to make adjustments of fabrics as you go along.
ReplyDeleteI hope I get that 'magical' feeling Shasta! LOL Thanks for the assistance.
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