Monday, 7 March 2011

Distracted by colour

My apologies for a quiet blog for the last little while. Life has been busy with kids' swimming carnivals, a school fete, some work days here and there, and trips to the farm. There has regretfully been no sewing time, but mercifully, some thinking time!

I have been thinking about colour. It all started here, with this Anna Maria Horner 'Good Folks' print purchased recently. I noticed an astonishing FIFTEEN colour dots on the selvedge. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this means fifteen different screens for a single print - wow! No wonder this fabric packs a punch!
I love to use the colours of selvedge dots to inspire colour schemes for quilting or stitchery designs.
Another source of colour inspiration is Color Collective. Lauren Willhite has compiled this wonderful resource by using the works of artists, designers and photographers to inspire imaginative, often unusual but always beautiful palettes of colour. Any day that you are stuck for a new colour combination, you are bound to find something to enliven your senses at this site.
You can waste a whole lot of time over at Kuler, where there are endless colour schemes to fire your imagination. Under the 'create' tab, you can upload your own photographs and Kuler will generate colour palettes to match. You can even choose a 'mood' for your palette from colourful, bright, muted, deep or dark.

For colour advice, specific to quilters, there are some great posts written by bloggers to refer to. My first port of call would be the queen of colour herself, Rita at Red Pepper Quilts. Rita has written a wonderful post called Colour in quilting in which she advises to take time to notice colour in the everyday.
Jeni, at In Color Order, is writing a brilliant series of posts called The Art of Choosing which deals with fabric and colour. She has lots of great advice about choosing and organising fabric, based around principles of colour. Pop over to Jeni's and feast your eyes!
And just for fun, here's what happens when colour, a bookshelf and someone with a whole lot of time collide!

Imagine doing this with your fabric stash - how fun! Have a great week,
Bloom x

16 comments:

  1. Thanks for all the great information and the eye candy!!

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  2. Ah color love it! It makes for a happy day. And so does that video!

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  3. bwah ha ha ha... I love that video :) especially the credits for all the books at the very end if i was drinking whilst reading that would have been snort worthy!

    Thanks :)

    I use very often the colour scheme generator helper thing at wellstyled.com and have done so for years. It's great when you have one or a couple of colours and you can make a pallette from it.

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  4. Great ideas. Another good source is http://www.design-seeds.com/.

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  5. Thanks for the great links for colour, it is always a concept that I struggle with for each quilt! And the book case people....really do have too much time on their hands!

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  6. Love the video, I agree it would be fun done with fabric.

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  7. Great links! Thank you. To me colour (and light, well, what is colour without light?) is what life and beauty are all about.

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  8. Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [08 Mar 12:00am GMT]. Thanks, Maria

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  9. Ha! Brilliant!! Thanks for the advice, who knew that the selvedge brought such wisdom? I will be keeping them from now on!
    Cheers
    Shani

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  10. Wow what a brilliant post!
    Absolutely fantastic!
    Thanks for the links and great tips.
    best wishes always
    Catherine

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  11. WOW, what an amazing post... I love the selvedges, the colorschemes... Amazing picturework as well!
    Enjoy Spring,
    love Maaike

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  12. Is THAT what those circles on the salvage are for? Ha! I never even knew that!? Love your bits of inspiration ;)

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  13. Says "this video does not exist", what happened to it?

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