How to Select the Right Colors for Your Quilt
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How to Select the Right Colors for Your Quilt
Selecting fabrics for your quilts can be a difficult task if you are not comfortable choosing color schemes. While some people do have a natural instinct for selecting perfect colors, others don’t. The good news is that color- choosing skills can be developed with a little knowledge and practice… and a color wheel. To make it really simple, try starting with a quilt using a monochromatic color scheme. Choose a color you like, and then combine fabrics that are light, medium and dark. For example, if your color scheme is red, you can select fabrics that range from pink to a dark red to include in your quilt. Once you have your fabrics chosen, pay attention to the value as you decide where to place the fabrics in your quilt. If you are making an Ohio Star quilt block, you could place the light pink in the center square and the dark red as the points in the star surrounding the center. Fill in the remaining pieces in the block in medium pink. Another type of color selection for a quilt is a polychromatic color scheme. This quilt uses many different colors. Most crazy quilts and many scrap quilts are polychromatic, although either of these types of quilts can easily have a more limited color selection. If you are making a quilt that has a complementary color scheme or an analogous color scheme, it could be helpful to have a color wheel. Complementary colors are those that are across the color wheel from each other, while analogous colors sit next to each other on the wheel. Sometimes even using a color wheel can be frustrating. It wasn’t until I took a class in fabric dying that I understood why not all greens looked good together; or why some purples seemed to clash with each other. It turns out that because green is a combination of yellow and blue, how much of each is used to make the green will affect the actual color of green. If there is more yellow, you will get a yellow-green; and those don’t mix too well with the blue-greens. This is one place where a color wheel can help a lot. By placing the wheel next to your fabric, you can see whether the fabric is tending to the yellow or to the blue. By sticking with one or the other, you will probably be happier with your final quilt. If you are completely stuck with colors, a quick trip to a paint store to get a collection of paint chips may help. Often paint stores have color chips with multiple, coordinating colors. Taking one or more of these along on your fabric shopping trip may make the selection of your fabric much easier. Color value, as well as the size of the print in your fabric, may make a difference in how your fabrics Photographs are another method to use when selecting a color for your quilt. Color wheels are a great source for determining colors. Start with your basic instinct(s) and use the color wheel against contrasting materials and determine if this is the color scheme you want. A color wheel is simply a reference tool that shows you how colors work together. It can definitely help guide you -- and stimulate your creativity -- but don't allow the wheel to make your color choices. Color Value Basics Color value is a term that refers to how light or dark a color is. Value is an important characteristic because it helps quilters decide how to arrange patches of fabric to make them either blend or contrast with each other. One of the best ways to get comfortable with color value is to experiment with fabrics on a design wall. Gather a group of fabric swatches of different colors. Place them side by side on the wall, starting with the lightest fabric and moving across the wall with darker pieces. Step back. Does the line of fabrics blend subtly from light to dark or are there fabrics that pop out to interrupt the flow? Re-sort the fabrics and check again. You didn't do anything "wrong" if the organization still isn't quite right. That's because it's easy to sort fabrics when they're all basically the same color, but throw in multiple colors and it becomes more of a challenge, in part because you're adding another characteristic to the color value issue--color warmth. Color Value for Quilters Color value is a term that refers to how light or dark a color is when placed next to another color. Color value is every bit as important as color itself, because it helps quilters decide how to arrange patches of fabric to make them either blend or contrast with each other, and it's those arrangements that create our patterns. Put Color Value to Work for You Color value works hand in hand with the color wheel. Becoming familiar with the intertwined characteristics of color and color value will help you position fabrics to create the image that's in your mind. Learn to juggle color and color value and you'll be happy with your Using a Color Wheel Forget about all the "rules" you've heard about colors that do and do not "match," because you can make any color work with any other color by playing with different versions of it. That's where a color wheel comes in handy. Forget about the idea that a color wheel makes color decisions for us -- wrong! But it does help us understand the relationship between colors, and that makes fabric selection a lot easier. Let's get familiar with some of the terms you'll hear when you use a color wheel. Primary Colors Blue, red and yellow are called primary colors because they are the basis for other colors. Mix them together in different ways and you can create every other color on the color wheel. The three primary colors are arranged at equal distances from each other on the most commonly used color wheel, shown above. Secondary Colors The three secondary colors on a color wheel are located midway between the primary colors. They are created by mixing together equal amounts of the primary colors on either side of them. * Green, equal parts of blue and yellow * Orange, equal parts of yellow and red * Violet, equal parts of blue and red
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