Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Helping you find amazing colours for your next quilt. 

Welcome back to Colour Inspiration Tuesday! And an extra warm welcome to you if you have arrived here via the Stitched in Color blog and have joined us at Clever Chameleon for the first time. Here we explore colours with patchwork and quilting specifically in mind, although the colours also work for any other creative project you might be planning of course. This week we are going to have a bumper week. Today we will explore ice-cream tones, later in the week I am planning to investigate the colours of buried pineapples, cocktails at dusk and flamingoes in the swimming pool! Intrigued? I hope so!

This week we are approaching the exploration of our quilt colours just a little bit differently to usual. Because we are joining in the Stitched in Color’s Summer Crush mosaic contest! Yay!!

Not too long ago I discovered the absolutely beautiful Stitched in Color blog. It resonated with me immediately, especially the colour mosaics you can find here. Rachel writes: “Slow down a minute, my friend, and ponder with me in color.” What a wonderful sentiment. Ever since discovering her page, I have been waiting for a chance to join in the mosaic fun.

One of the reasons why I am so keen to link in with the mosaic contests is because it takes what we do here at Clever Chameleon – choosing a photo, generating colour schemes (or mood boards), and thinking about their uses in a quilt – and moves it into the world of real fabrics. A bit like I did with Jewel Tone Triangles a while back. Today, the fabrics in question are the pretties of the luscious Quilt Sandwich Fabrics shop on Etsy. It makes us work within the confines of what is available today, from one source. This is a helpful skill to practice!

Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Ice-cream Tones

So, back to the matter at hand. Like every other colour palette so far, I have started with an interesting photo from Unsplash.com. This week I focussed on summer-themed photos, and came up with a small short-list of candidates (the contest allows two uploads per participant). To kick us off, we are going to look at ice-cream. Not many things yell summer louder than ice-cream, right?!

The “Ice-cream Tones” colour scheme is yellow, pink and brown. It evokes thoughts of hot days, cold treats and berry flavours. I emphasised the darker pink in my mood board because my favourite summer treat is a frozen yoghurt from the Copenhagen Ice-creamery, which has a dark berry puree swirled through! Delicious!

I would recommend using the dark brown colour as a contrast highlight. Just enough to make the yellows and pinks really shine. I would also add a lot of white to a quilt in these colours, to preserve the clean, light brightness of summer days. 

What to create with the Ice-cream Tones colour palette?

Lately, at this point in each post, I have been adding a visual quilt idea or two for you, based around the colours in  the day’s colour palette. But that’s where this week is different. Today we will be matching fabrics to our colour palette instead. You can do this with any colour palette and your favourite online fabric store, anytime. Great, isn’t it?!

Firstly, I went through the fabrics on offer at Quilt Sandwich Fabrics, the contest’s sponsors. Here are the fabrics that I initially pulled out. 

Now, the rules of this contest say I have to narrow the selection down to just 9. Which nine would I most like to make a quilt with?! 

Here is my process…..

How I chose nine fabrics for an Ice-cream Tones project

My eye was caught by this fabric first – Direction in Yellow, an arrow print on a yellow background, from the Tropical Paradise collection by Josephine Kimberling for Blend Fabrics. 

Not only did it capture the colours of the Ice-cream tones palettes, but it also introduced purples for deep summer sunsets, and aquas and blues from the beach and the sky. All things that very much make up summer here in coastal Australia.

To make sure the aqua, blue and purple sit well in my collection I added 2 more prints that use these colours. The bike sign print (From the Ride collection designed by Julia Rothman) was a seriously good find! My hubby and I and the kids cycle a lot, all year round, but especially in summer. And then the feathers (From the Tsuru collection by Rashida Coleman-Hale for Cloud 9 Fabric). I added this fabric because I love it, and because no summer walk around our local wetlands is complete without collecting feathers.

The next step was to make sure there is enough dark contrast and larger scale print in my collection. So I added the pink daisies on the brown background (Daisies and stems in lilac, magenta, olive and lime on a brown background. Designed by Tula Pink for the Acacia collection by Free Spirit Fabrics). Daisies are definitely very summer.

I then went back to my colour scheme and emphasised the main colours with small scale print fabrics. Two pinks and two yellows of different colour values. To finish the collection I added a medium scale medallion print that has both pink and yellows as its main colours. It was designed by Keri Beyer for the Dream A Little Dream With Me collection by In The Beginning Fabrics. The circles remind me of the summer sun, but dreams also seem appropriate for summer.

This is what I ended up with. I hope you like it.

What about the backing?

Well it’s not part of the contest, but I saw this little gem along the way. And I can say I would love to have this on the back. It is just too cute!!! And all the right colours too. It is covered in bright houses with a happy attitude and is from Timeless Treasures.

Back to some quick Colour Inspiration Tuesday formalities….

Some information if you are new here today…..

Recently I put together our first colour scheme review. For a good introduction to Colour Inspiration Tuesday, you can find 12 colour palettes all together here.

Last week we looked at classic blues and greens in the Another World Blue colour palette. We also explored what the Cat on a Wall quilt pattern would look like if we used these colours instead of the Sunset Wall palette.

Follow the links to find out what we’ve been up to. And subscribe to emails to keep up to speed from now on!

Credit

Today’s photo of yummy ice-cream is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. Credit is not required, but I love to give credit where credit is due, and am always grateful to people who contribute to open source communities. So I would like you to know that this lovely photo was provided by Ian Dooley via Unsplash. Be sure to check out his collection of photos on Unsplash.com.
ian dooley

For colour inspiration for your quilts in your inbox weekly follow along by subscribing to this blog. Or follow Clever Chameleon Quilt Colour Inspiration on Pinterest and pin your favourite colour palettes to try later. 

P.S. If you would like to use Ian’s photo or another Colour Inspiration Tuesday photo for your own projects, you can easily find all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place for free in my Colour Inspiration Collection.