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Choosing a Color Plan

Where do you get ideas for color plans for quilts? This is a question I've been meaning to raise here in RCTQ Land. With the current interest in color on another thread, I guess this is a good time.

I like to look at my environment for suggestions on quilt colors. Favorite garments are good sources. The mural at a restaurant may suggest a quilt plan. One cue is my own house: dark cream siding, light cream trim, medium taupe shutters, medium blue-teal door, dark blue-teal porch chairs. Seasonal wreaths or flowers may add new accents. So, I can think about various ways to use those colors on an Irish Chain quilt, then work up different proportions of those same colors for a star quilt, and so on.

These exercises are fun, and are practice for future projects. Most often, I don't even make the quilt. When I'm stuck in the dentist's chair, or in line at the grocery, and so on, thinking about quilting is a distraction, or to pass time.

So, how do you get your best color ideas?

PAT in VA/USA

Reply to
Pat in Virginia
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Great question, Pat! I tend to gravitate toward colors I like, then find colors that blend or contrast or just generally "go" with those. Right now I'm working on blocks from my recent class, and it's a real stretch for me. Why? Because it's scrappy; I don't "do" scrappy, but this is a fun pattern to play with, so I'm soldiering on.

Reply to
Sandy

either they just appear in my head, or one fabric inspires me. I will go and check on the colour wheel to find a 3rd colour if I have two I want to use together. Often the inspiration fabric will get completely buried in other fabrics, recently I had about 1/3 of a yard of a fabric with a white background and yellow and blue flowers on it, with leaves visible as well. Just glancing at the quilt you'd say it was a yellow and blue quilt with green accents, you'd have to look twice to find that fabric.

Cheers Anne

Reply to
Anne Rogers

Mood, Pat. I go by mood. Sometimes I want a quilt to say 'love', maybe 'peace and quiet', usually I'm just going for 'happy'. I can even s-t-r-e-t-c-h and do colors appropriate to a time such as the 30's repros. I'm so glad you asked because I had meant to recommend the book by Joen Wolfrom, 'Color Play' for Cindy and others struggling with color. You don't have to agree with Wolfrom's every word or even agree with what she thinks the color wheel should include. OTOH, now and then I need some help with what will calm down a composition or brighten it and Wolfrom has always been great help. Colors are relative, you know - meaning their mood can change simply by their combination with another color. A good example is peach. It can be soft and warm. It can turn to dreary mud. Right now, on the design wall is a giraffe and an elephant. Gray or a grim brown simply would not do for the elephant. (I didn't think a 'pink' elephant was what was called for either). Ta-dah! The elephant is purple. Of course. For those whose personal preference would have been lime, there's heaps of lime in their jungle. I didn't mean to be so long-winded, but just one more. When you find a color that warms your heart, stash a lot of it. Two favorites here are a beautiful watermelon and a parakeet. Hooo-eeee, can they ever do happy. Polly

Reply to
Polly Esther

Very often - I will see a fabric that says it IS a certain person - the idea for a quilt may or may not grow from there at the fabric shop. Notice that I wrote: IS and not 'for or intended for'. Most times, the fabrics will come home with me and will sit on the shelf for a while until the 'friends of the original fabric show up'....I have never been in a position to buy all the fabric for a single quilted project at one time - I buy for the stash and I usually find a complete or almost complete project on my shelves - jennellh.

Reply to
jennellh

Reply to
Taria

Reply to
nzlstar*

Good question PAT. My best ideas usually come by accident! I see a combination that I wouldn't have thought of and realise it would be perfect. (Of course, I usually forget to make a note of it and it 'goes' from my mind). If I 'work' at getting a collection, in my mind, or in theory, I usually end up with something pretty or attractive, but perhaps predictable. I love my 'accidental images'. Sometimes I will have fabric out for something, and see a couple of colours together which make me ponder. I had the greatest difficulty with colour, when I first started, but now it is one of the pleasurable stages. I do, like you, think for ages about colour combinations. Sometimes I will pick out two colours that have no good connection, and will try to make them play nicely together by incorporating other colours. Mind you, I can't usually finish that process successfully; but it's interesting to start with! . In message , Pat in Virginia writes

Reply to
Patti

I like to have other people pick out fabrics for me, because they pick things I wouldn't and sometimes this comes in handy. I recently made a bunch of friendship stars in happy tones of yellow and orange on black. Originally I intended to use them to border a Halloween wall hanging, but then I decided they would overwhelm the center embroidery. So I sewed them into a small wallhanging. Looking for a border, I auditioned a bunch of my fabrics and could not find anything I liked. Then I came upon a fabric that was one of several my sister-in-law got me for my birthday last year. It was a brownish maroon and I would never have bought it for myself. But it looked great alongside the stars. I have the quilt hanging on my wall now and I marvel at how perfect that seemingly ugly muddy color is with the yellows and oranges!

Iris

Reply to
I.E.Z.

Brownish maroon? That's very interesting and one I'll keep in mind. I have a couple of sort of dull clay flowerpot fabrics here that insisted that they come home with me - with no idea when or where they'll be called upon. Polly

"I.E.Z." I like to have other people pick out fabrics for me, because they pick

Reply to
Polly Esther

sometimes the "ugly" fabrics make the best quilts. such as: baby-poop green or tea-dyed tan, or muddy rusty maroon. i usually tend to keep to my comfort zone (autumn colors) when pondering a quilt for myself, but for other people, i ask what their favorite color is and if they have a preference of pattern or theme, then take it from there. amy

Reply to
amy

Plan? Roberta in D, Queen of the Scrap Heap

"Pat in Virginia" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:ZTaUi.13155$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe18.lga...

Reply to
Roberta Zollner

Most of my quilts are based on a fabric that I like. However, I have done a couple based on colors in scenery. My "Jewels of the Southwest" was done in colors that reminded me of scenery we had seen on a trip to Nevada, Arizona, and Death Valley.

One summer, while on vacation in Northern Wisconsin, I lay on my back looking up through the tree tops to the sky and was inspired to do my "Land of Sky Blue Waters" quilt. This photo isn't the greatest, but it's the only one I have. I used a lot of green prints from my stash and a lovely blue fossil ferns fabric.

Julia in MN

Reply to
Julia in MN

Howdy!

Osmosis.

R/Sandy

Reply to
Sandy Ellison

Great query, Pat. Usually, I have a vague idea about the colours that I want to use ( e.g., I want to make a quilt inspired by Fall, or I want to make a CW reproduction quilt using blues, or I want to try a colour study using Moda Marbles and Black as the background ). Then I check my stash, make adjustments on the plan and wing it from there.

- dlm. in central MA

Reply to
- dlm.

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