If you talk about a primary color combination, the first thing that might come to mind is the inside of a kindergarten... pure hues of red, yellow, and blue have a tendency to be pretty intense, and especially daring as a fabric combination. For this week's #summerstackfridays link-up, for those following along with the weekly theme, a
primary color palette just might be as challenging as one can get... but why no put a little twist on it?
Let's just start out with red... what happens when you add white? You end up with pink. And depending on how much white you add to it, depends on how light or dark a pink it is. Even a pink would still "technically" be in the red family. My red has a slight orange touch, and has been lightened, which means that am now working with tints of red. (a tint is a color + white) I've toned the intensity down, which will give less contrast when I combine it with the other colors. Even though the bottom fabric has more of a pinkish-lilac background, the coral-red flowers connect to the other "red" fabrics that I've pulled.
For my yellows, again, I've not selected the purist hue of yellow, but have picked a warmer hue. This yellow is headed towards orange, but is still arguably in the yellow family. Because these yellows have added grey to them, they start to get a little muddy. When working with such muddy hues, they don't "bite" as much as when you are combining only pure hues.
Since there are limited names for colors, we often have a tendency to use a general color name, rather than specific color name. Obviously when you mix blue and yellow, then you end up with green. In this case, even though there is a lot of green in my blue, I don't feel like I can call it green just yet. For my primary color palette, I am really using secondary and tertiary colors. Those are just essentially the more specific colors in between the secondary colors. My red moves towards orange, and so does my yellow, and my blue moves towards green - a primary color palette with a twist!
So, when mixing your primary color fabrics for the link-up tomorrow, think about how you can put a little twist on your colors... do you want to lighten them? darken them? use muddy hues? I hope that this second glance makes working with a primary color palette more of an adventure and less of a challenge. I''ll be sharing the full fabric stack tomorrow for the #summerstackfridays link-up... it's not too late to join in!
Last week I shared about several upcoming events, one of them being my class offered at Nadelwelt on Color Theory for Quilters. I am super excited about this class becuase I am super excited about color! I think my love of color came from my dad, who finished college with an art degree.
I suppose that I've gushed a time or two about my super talented dad, and I remember all those "teachable moments" that he took full advantage of when I was young. He would always sneak in a narration here about contrasting colors, or a comment there to point out a particular color scheme... my life was filled with mini art lessons, painting sessions in our furnace room, and tips on mixing paint colors. While I feel that working with color is very intuitive for me, I realize that perhaps all those times heavily influenced me in the way I approach color now.
Since I realize that not everyone has had the advantage of daily art lessons since childhood, my hope is that teaching about what I've learned about color can take some of the guesswork out of picking fabrics for projects... it is my favorite part, you know?
So, you may have noticed in my last post, little cards with fabric swatches on them. I decided that this would be the prefect way to play around with fabric combinations without class participants having to travel with their whole stash!?!
I've started making cards myself, and I think it can really give you a better understanding of your tastes, likes, and dislikes. Painfully missing from my stash has been, and always will be, red. Kind of hard to believe that a beautiful red chair takes center stage in our living room, huh? But, I think seeing your stash in this way helps to assess what you have and what's missing, and what you "need".
Fabric swatch cards are a great way to do a pre-pull before that big explosion that we all know happens... please don't tell me that I am the only one whose room literally looks like a bomb has exploded after the fabric pull has commenced?
How many times, have you been fabric shopping, and you've had to manage those loose swatches to find a missing accent fabric OR you ended buying a fabric that you were just certain was a perfect match, only to realize once you got home that you were a couple shades off? These are great to slip in your wallet when you head to your local quilt shop.
So, even if your aren't able to make it to Nadelwelt, I thought I would share these little fabric swatch cards that I made... for FREE! They're in English AND in German. Go on... show me your stash!
