Experiment with Maverick Colors
Unrestrained Colors Pack Drama into your Art Quilts - Part 2 of 3
Color Blocks – how much of which colors do I use?
In part 1 of this article I discussed Maverick color palettes, the concept of “mother fabric”, and filler fabrics.
The Maverick look is on every color wheel as an accented analogous color scheme. Knowing the correct proportions for the main, the accent and the other 2 analogous (support) fabrics is the challenging part when selecting fabric for your art quilts.
Filler fabrics can be solid shades, prints, stripes, polka dots, whatever you please. Whatever is on the fabric you choose is less important than the color(s) of it and how much of it you’ll use.
You will probably be using many different fabrics, in small, medium and possibly large patches. When you are creating an art quilt, it’s almost impossible to arrange the fabric pieces without a design wall to audition pieces and make design decisions. As an art quilt grows in size, you will be re-arranging, substituting, starting all over and discovering stuff you have no idea of when you started out. To me this is the fun part of creating a one of a kind art quilt.
To the right of these next two accented analogous Maverick color wheel examples is an illustration of approximately how much area for each color is needed to keep the palette balanced. Notice that there are several “sizes” of color blocks within each illustration. For this article, the word block does not mean a standard quilt block such as Log Cabin. Block used here means an area or portion.
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- The predominant “main” color block is shown in the center top portion. The main color block has 2 lighter and 2 darker value blocks that are smaller in area. Here is where you can select a few or many darker and lighter shades of filler fabrics that are about the same hue as this main color. When added up together, the main color and its shades make up approximately 2/5 of the palette which equals 2/5 of the fabric and 2/5 of the finished art quilt. This is a guideline, not a hard and fast rule. You now have taken care of the center of the 3 analogous colors.
- The accent color is allowed approximately 1/5 of the entire palette. It’s shown at the bottom of the illustration. The accent color includes 4 smaller size color blocks meaning that you can safely choose an assortment of fabrics that will be lighter and darker but still close to the accent color. As you select the shades, maintain the correct proportion. (1/5 of the palette =1/5 of the appropriate fabrics =1/5 of the finished quilt).
- Shown across the middle of each illustration, and comprising a total of approximately 2/5 of the whole palette/fabrics/quilt are the 2 “outer” colors from the analogous scheme. On a standard color wheel, these two colors will be found on each side of the main color. The 2 supporting colors also have blocks of darker and lighter shades, the same idea as the main and accent colors – a range of similar shades in the right proportions, each outer color adding up to approximately 1/5 of the palette = 1/5 of the fabric = 1/5 of the quilt.
The little white and black circles show you the 3 analogous colors.
Coming up next
Part 3 – choosing prints and solids to construct balanced blocks of the palette colors