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:
- Select a photo or a magazine page with colors that just make your skin crawl. I mean you really can’t stand the colors. Then insert it in your journal. For my color journal, I took a photograph of a Black Swallowtail caterpillar in my front yard. I couldn’t believe its color combinations: light and dark green, yellow, and black. Yuk!
- Select one swatch of fabric for each hue in the photo. Glue these swatches down in your color journal and call them Palette #1.
- Now make some changes to the palette. Try using lighter or darker values, swapping some hues for others, or adding some other hues to the palette.
- Number each subsequent palette.
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!
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