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.
