Fine art to funky traditional: life and quilting
I’m so excited! I’ve created a tutorial on Making a Quilter’s Color Wheel, and you can click on the slidecast here to view it. This took me a couple days to do: an afternoon to shoot the photos and another day to make the slideshow, record the audio, upload and troubleshoot.
Leave me a comment to let me know if you found this useful. If so, I’ll make additional tutorials.
Intensity is probably the least understood of the three elements of color (hue, value, and intensity). Intensity refers to how bright a color is: does it shock you into needing sunglasses? That’s an intense fabric. Does the fabric fade into the background so much you don’t even notice it? That’s a dull fabric. (Dull here doesn’t mean boring or unattractive, simply less intense.
Guess which color is the most intense? It’s the color almost all quilters dread using: yellow. A beautiful, yet misunderstood hue. She is often left alone on the store shelves or in your stash because quilter’s fear it will overwhelm all their other gorgeous fabrics.
Brown is the opposite, an inherently dull color that almost everyone feels comfortable using. The most intense color combination is yellow and black (think of traffic signs like merge, or the yellow stripes on black pavement. Road crews use those colors because they are intense and get your attention.)
The first step to using intense colors is buying a range of intensities. Quilt shops actually carry fewer bolts of yellow than any other color (with purple not far behind) so it’s not easy to find brights, mediums, and dulls in certain colors. But persist, because the ability to use a duller version of an intense color can be the secret to a successful color combination.
The second step is to use less of an intense color. That is what most quilters intuitively do: if they use yellow, they use a small amount. If it’s an intense version of yellow, that’s the smart move. Otherwise, remember you can select a duller version and include more.
The third step is to strategically place the intense colors around the quilt. If you mass the intense colors in one location, they draw your eye there, demanding “Look at me!” and the rest of your quilt gets ignored. The better way to handle intense colors is to use them to your advantage: put a piece at the top left, center, and bottom right, guiding the viewer’s eye throughout your quilt.
Now you get to play in your color journal.
Extra credit: try some classic color combinations using different intensities: red/green complements, blue/yellow analogous, and blue/white are just a few suggestions. See how intensity affects the color combinations and which you like best. Why?
Value is the lightness or darkness of a hue. Value is essential to create enough contrast to recognize the design in your block and quilt. Without value contrast, your quilt blocks simply blend into one another without any recognizable design.
Value is not a color or a hue. It is how light or dark that hue is. And what is that thing in the photo above? That is my value scale for painting. It starts from white and goes all the way to black, with the intermediate values in between. The holes in the center of each value allow me to put the value scale in front of the subject I’m painting and identify its value. I’ve made a similar value scale exclusively for quilters, and its available in my class Color Wheel Recipes. It’s a tool you won’t see anywhere else, and you can learn how to make one for yourself by taking the class at Sew Memorable.
The quilt above is really all about value, not hue. I selected the center panel first, and I wanted it to be the star, not the rest of the quilt. I didn’t want the other fabrics or designs to overwhelm the center. So, I used only light to medium values. I originally selected a chocolate brown fabric with white pin dots for the border, but it was way too dark and it completely overwhelmed the center panel. It wasn’t about the brown; instead, the value of the brown was too dark. So I selected the stripe instead, as it contained light to medium values, with a touch of the dark brown. I could have selected a fabric in any hue as long as the value wasn’t too dark.
Next up: Intensity
Complementary colors are those across from, or opposite each other on the color wheel. When you place complementary colors next to each other in a quilt, they have high contrast, meaning they stand out from one another. The classic complementary color scheme is red and green. Most of us gravitate toward that color scheme naturally during the
month of December, without ever realizing that combining those two colors follows the principles of the color wheel. Here is my Christmas quilt from 2005 that I have hanging over my staircase bannister:
The quilt below is my “Ode to Joy,” a celebration of poppies in the spring. I used the red/green complementary colors, and notice how vibrant the quilt is and how well the poppy stands out from the background (grasses in the field).
So how does this apply to making your quilt? Complementary colors make a high-energy quilt. They also provide instant contrast, a necessary element if you are using a block that needs to stand out from the background. Examples include star blocks, Irish Chain, Bow Tie, or anything else with an obvious representational design in the block. Imagine using fabrics that blended together if you were creating a Lone Star quilt. What a waste it would be to do all that that cutting on the bias and precise piecing, only to have the star fade into the background.
What about other color combinations? Blue and orange are also complements. Before you say “yuck,” envision a field of pumpkins against a blue sky, or squash soup in a blue ceramic bowl. Also yellow and violet are complements, but you see them used together less often. Winter pansies offer up that color combination straight from nature.
Work a couple of these complementary color schemes in your color journal by doing this:
Extra Credit: See if you find one piece of fabric in your stash that contains both of your complementary colors. Kaffe Fassett creates stunning fabrics by including several shades of one color with a bit of its complement thrown in.
If you are enjoying these lessons, check out my class Color Wheel Recipes. I teach this class at Sew Memorable in Dawsonville, GA and I’m available to teach to groups. I’d love to visit you and your guild.
Analogous colors are those next to each other on the color wheel. They are similar in color and have very little contrast, meaning they blend well together. Contrast means that one color stands out from the next. One way to remember analogous colors is that they are neighbors on the color wheel and they get along famously (don’t we all love our neighbors?)
So how does this apply to making a quilt? Analogous colors always go well together. If you want to make a red quilt, look to those colors next to it and add some of those: red-orange, orange, and red-violet. Those colors together make a knockout color combination. But how can you be sure?
Your color journal! This is where you are going to create an analogous color scheme of your choice to see if it works before you commit to a quilt. Who wants to spend a month or two on a quilt only to find out at the end those color don’t really work together?
?
Analogous Color Scheme in My Color Journal
So here’s what you need to do to create an analogous color scheme in your color journal:
Extra Credit: See if you find one piece of fabric in your stash that contains analogous colors. This shouldn’t be difficult, as many quilter’s fabrics contain analogous colors.
Did you make your color wheel? How did you find the experience? Did you have all those colors in your stash? Most quilters have them, they just haven’t thought of the colors in terms of red-violet, they call it magenta. Or blue-green is turquoise.
Have you ever wondered why a color wheel is necessary in the first place? Early painting teachers (we’re talking renaissance here) needed a way to teach students about the similarity and contrast among colors, and the easiest way to do that was to put the colors in a circle. Colors next to each other were similar (analogous) and those opposite each other contrasted (complementary). So that’s why we use a wheel and use those same terms today. Even though we aren’t painters, we are creating color relationships with fabrics in our quilts, and we can benefit from the same lessons as painters.
Only quilters don’t have to mix paints to get pink: we can just swing by our favorite quilt shop and pick up our favorite pink fabric, along with some thread, a book, and a pattern to boot.
In the next lesson we’re going to tackle those color relationships and create some samples in our journals.
I was afraid of losing my own color style if I learned the color wheel, so for years I resisted. Finally, I gave in, feeling like I didn’t know the “secret handshake” of all those art quilters who kept going on about the color wheel.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t learn it as a quilter, I learned how to use the color wheel when I began taking watercolor painting courses. I had to mix my own colors and it was imperative that I know the colors on the wheel, how they interacted, what made a color dull, what made it intense, and why some colors went together well and others didn’t.
So I took that knowledge I gained in watercolor and applied it to my quilts. And I never did lose my own color style, I simply made the colors I liked work better together. I was no longer afraid of using ANY color in a quilt, because now that I knew the color wheel, I could coordinate any color with any other color. They all go together if you know how to do it.
And you get to learn how. But again, baby steps.
Don’t fret over perfectly-sized squares or a perfect-looking wheel. The point here is to get the colors down and evaluate what you have in your stash.
This is a color exercise that will really flex your creative muscles. After all, we all like working with fabrics we enjoy, but what about using fabrics you can’t stand?
Why am I having you do this?
Because at some point, you are going to be asked to make a quilt with colors you don’t like. It may be for a gift, for a fundraiser, for a friendship quilt, or one of a thousand other reasons. But who wants to work on a project, especially as long as a quilt takes, using colors you don’t like?
And you are going to learn much more from using colors you aren’t comfortable with than with colors you love. So, here goes:
Palette #2 contains the first change I made to my palette. I removed the black and substituted dark blue. Black can appear flat and lifeless, so I wanted to create a similar dark feel with another dark hue. I think the blue worked well.
I still didn’t like the overall palette, so I added some other hues and values to Palette #3. I added some medium values greens to transition between the light and dark greens, and I warmed up the overall palette by adding violet and red. I really like the palette now and it is one I could work with in a quilt.
I also selected a single fabric that contained the original hues in the palette and pasted it above the photo.
This took some trial and error. I auditioned several fabrics before I came up with a combination I liked. Don’t be discouraged if it takes you a while to do this. Keep trying and feel free to upload your palette when you’re done. If you leave a comment on this blog you can add a photograph to it easily. We would love to see your results!
Next week we are going to start on the color wheel, and it won’t be like any other discussion on the color wheel you’ve ever heard of or done. You’ll actually understand it and will be excited about using it!
Now that you are training your eye to see color more observantly and have started keeping a color journal, you’re ready to start creating color palettes with your fabric.
Extra Credit: Try variations on single swatches of fabric for each color in your palette. Look for a fabric in your stash that has all the colors from that photo. Or create a more complex and rich color palette by selecting multiple fabrics for each color in the photo, with a wider range of values, from light to dark.
You’ve just experimented with color without committing to a quilt yet! Who wants to spend all that time cutting, piecing and quilting to find out afterwards you really didn’t like those colors after all? Life is way too short!
Now you can decide if you enjoy these colors enough to use them in an entire quilt, if you want to tweak the colors a bit more in your journal, or if it’s time to move on to another color palette.
Most people have their own intuitive color style, but simply aren’t comfortable or confident using their own preferences in a quilt. Starting today, you are going to look at color differently, more observantly. By recording your likes, dislikes, and color observations, you are coming one step closer to recognizing your own personal color “style” or palette.
Next time you’re admiring a beautiful painting/quilt/photograph/rug (or whatever piece you’re admiring), stop and notice the colors. Really take a moment to ask yourself why you like that floral arrangement. Take a photograph of the flowers in your garden, your favorite coffee mug, or whatever offers up a striking color palette in your eyes, and paste that photo in your journal.
Go through your magazines and cut out the pages that have color combinations you love. Add photographs of your favorite quilts. Look at nature and observe the color combinations. Have you ever noticed that in nature green is a neutral? It goes with everything from orange daylillies to red berries, to blue larkspur to the yellow of lemons. After visiting botanical gardens, hiking on wilderness trails and taking photos on those excursions, I added those photos to my color journal and was amazed at the endless variations of green and combinations with other colors. As you become more observant, you’ll notice that each season has its own color palette, and you can capture nature’s glorious colors in your journal!
This week, be a color detective. Notice colors and color combinations, and start filling up that journal. Don’t feel like it has to be a work of art. It’s a place for you to experiment with color without committing to a quilt yet. Have fun and get busy with that glue stick!
The best way to approach anything new is by taking small steps. So for your first lesson, you are going to outfit yourself with a Color Kit. That’s it. Don’t worry about what you’re going to do with it. Just gather the supplies. And you thought this was going to be tough, didn’t you? Don’t forget I want your comments to make these lessons great.
Your Color Kit needs:
Blank, large journal (from Wal-Mart or Michael’s)
Colored pencils
Tape
Glue or Glue Stick
Magazines
Camera (digital or Polaroid)
This isn’t meant to be expensive. If there’s an item you don’t have on the list, just pick it up when you can. Don’t stress out about not having everything.
Welcome to award-winning author and quilt artist Maria Peagler's online studio and classroom. Relax, have some fun, and take a look around. You'll find quilts, free lessons and ebooks. Keep checking back, I've always got something new. Better yet, subscribe to my blog!
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