Unrestrained Colors Pack Drama in your Art Quilts
Part 1 of 3 – “mother fabrics”, and accented analogous color palettes
Say you want to work with magenta, tangerine and lime green fabric. How do you effectively harmonize these colors in a quilt when using commercially printed fabrics?
The standard color wheel with its primary and secondary colors sectors is well known to most of us since school days. It’s one thing to select great color combinations, but the tricky part is how much of which colors will create a balanced and therefore pleasing result?
One way is to select a “mother fabric”, a printed material you find in a quilt shop that has the design and type of colors you want to feature. Since it appeals to you, you want to use the mother fabric as the basis or anchor of the quilt. However; it might not necessarily be the most used fabric.
The mother fabric is a start, but you still need “filler fabric” to complete your sewing project. Too much or too little or the wrong fillers could result in disappointment after you have spent a lot of time and money.
This series of posts will help you learn how to select filler fabrics and how much to use. You actually can use a lot of filler fabrics in many shades, both solid and printed. Filler fabrics support the main color and the accent color.
When you analyze the printed fabric, besides its beautiful design, think about the elements of color that appealed to you originally. Remember tho, the impact of the print’s design will be diminished when you cut up the material into ever small pieces.
But you still aren’t sure how much of any of the fabrics you need to use.
In the palette examples shown below, the color schemes are the analogous type of color schemes, 3 side by side colors on the color wheel plus an accent color that sits directly opposite the middle of the 3 analogous colors on the color wheel. In the first example, blue, green and yellow are accented by red.
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I call these examples of accented analogous palette “Mavericks” because the colors are very bold. When you are working with fabrics for the Maverick look, the accent color fabric must be in the correct proportion to the analogous fabrics. Only then will all the fabrics work together to build an harmonious effect.
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These 2 photos show other analogous colors schemes. Notice the little white circles on either side of the little black circle. These circles mark exactly where in each color wheel the analogous colors are found. The accent will always be directly across from the center of the 3 related colors and that central color is also found in the middle of the wheel, green and orange in the above 2 photos..
It is possible to skew the color wheel in many ways but the effect will not be as vibrant as these Mavericks.
coming up next:
Part 2 – color blocks or how much of which color do I use
