Sunday, November 5, 2006

Choosing Colours for Quilts

These pictures are of a quilt that I just finished quilting on my long arm. The quilt belongs to a customer. I don't always post pictures of my customer's quilts, but I found this one so appealing that I had to share it. The pattern is Yellow Brick Road and it is not the pattern so much that I fell in love with, but the colours and textures of the fabrics. I love this combination of colours--raspberry and teal.

While working on this quilt I have been thinking about starting Judy's latest Quilt For an Hour quilt. I usually don't work in just one or two colours as suggested in the samples posted by Judy. I prefer to work with scraps of all colours. Although the centers of the blocks are suited to my scrap bin, I am stuck when I try to come up with two colours to use for the borders and sashing. November may be over before I decide how I will make my version of the Gratitude quilt--I am currently using my hour a day thinking about which fabrics to use!

After working from my paint chips on my paint chip challenge, I discovered how useful paints chips are when choosing colours for quilts. I did some exploring on the internet and found a wonderful site by Behr Paint. If you go to this site, click on "Start Color Smart". Then select a colour and find other colours to coordinate with your choice. You can choose to see similar colours, see coordinated colours where your colour choice is the main colour, or see palettes where your colour choice is the accent. I think this could be a very useful tool when you are stumped for choosing colours for quilts when you want to do something other than scrappy.

I am looking for just the right combination of colours for my next quilt--something that appeals to me as much as the teal and raspberry combination of my customer's quilt.

8 comments:

  1. Fun quilt! Like the idea of learning from paint chips, too. Thinking definitely counts as time spent - some quilts require a lot of that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like the paint strips too for looking a gradations of color--maybe color matching at the quilt shop. YBR would not be choice of pattern either--too chaotic for me--but I love other Atkinson patterns. The colors are good together.

    The Baptist Fans look wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your quilting on the piece is beautiful. The yellow brick road pattern is an old friend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am so with you on the "usually scrappy" front. (I think I am going to do gratitude in two shades of yellow.) Thanks for the color site...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I like the paint chip idea -- let Home Depot do the color work for you *s*

    ReplyDelete
  6. paint strips are a wonderful help! I too like the color in this quilt, makes me smile.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love the baptist fan quilting - I've promised myself that I'm going to buy the template as a reqard for moving - I think it will work with the Gammill Premier which is the model I'm trading my machine in for.

    I find red and blue work well with scrappy quilts. Here's a picture of twin bed quilts where I used those two colors. http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7027/1400/1600/Twin%20cabins.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  8. I too have had quilts where I spent more time in the fabric selection than in the making of the quilt itself. That is part of the fun, so you might as well enjoy it.

    ReplyDelete