Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Hi – Happy Tuesday! I love purple and green combinations on quilts….. I haven’t made many so far but I sure do admire them a lot!
Today’s colour palette was inspired by a stunning photograph of a tulip bathed in light, so I have simply called it “Purple Tulip”. I think I have found a new favourite – I want to try a colour combination similar to Purple Tulip on a quilt very soon!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Purple Tulip
Add this light yellow to “Purple Tulip” for extra contrast and highlights.
The “Purple Tulip” colour palette is teal, plum, dusky rose, midnight blue, cadet blue and rose pink. If I had eight colour slots in my colour scheme template I would have added a light yellow. I even tried removing various colours so I could fit light yellow into this palette. But every colour seemed to be needed to keep Purple Tulip true to the feel of the original photo. So, I am giving it to you here as a bonus colour!
I would try this palette on a quilt by using the blues as highlight colours, and the purples, pinks and greens as my main colours. I would also consider adding a dark purple to add more dark contrast to my quilt if I wanted a really dramatic effect. Play with it until you find Your perfect combination!
Don’t like purple and green? Never mind…..
If you like the blue colours in this palette, but are not into purple and green so much, discover the “Blue Fox” colour scheme instead….
Today’s stock photo is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. While there is no obligation for me to tell you where I got this photo, I love to give credit where credit is due. So; this lovely photo was provided by Sarah Kothe via Unsplash.
P.S. If you would like to use this photo for your own projects, you can find all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place for free in my Colour Inspiration Collection.
Let’s explore the concept of colour value from a quilter’s perspective…… because paint mixing theory isn’t that helpful to us textile-sewing-person types……
Colour value definition
Colour Value is defined most simply as the relative lightness or darkness of a colour (read here, “fabric”!). The extremes of this continuum are black and white. All other colours lie somewhere in between the maximum darkness of black and the minimum lightness of white. Colour value is very easy to see in a grey scale or in a monochrome colour series. Here are some easy to spot colour value graduations:
Three colour value graduations in black, red and blue. The middle colours in the red and blue scales are pure colours, without black or white added. These are known as hues, The colours on the left of the hues are shades (hue + black) and the colours on the right are tints (hue + white)
Colour value is relative
The colour value of your fabric is relative to other fabrics or items around it. This is a really important fact! This means that whether a colour (fabric) appears to be dark or light can depend on the colours (fabrics) surrounding it. While white will always appear light and black will always be dark, colours closer to the middle of a colour range can appear light next to really dark colours or dark next to really light colours.
This is both great and not-so-great news for quilters. It is great, because it means that it is not necessary to use the extreme values of a colour to achieve good contrast in a quilt. A pastel quilt with a few well-placed mid-tones can look just as awesome as a vibrant quilt with saturated colours and a few dark highlights. Look at the image below. Both of the panels contain good contrast, even though they only cover a small subrange of colour values.
Note: the light and medium fabrics in the lefthand picture are the exact same fabrics as the medium and dark fabrics in the righthand picture.
Colour Value can be complicated……
This relativeness of colour values is also “not-so-great” because you need to understand the relationship of colours with each other to understand how they will look together. This is tricky, but remembering that colours will appear lighter next to a dark colour and darker next to a light colour will help avoid nasty surprises. Apart from this, the best method of working out “what works where” in a quilt is often trial and error, even for seasoned quilters. For this, I find a design wall is extraordinarily helpful. If two fabrics or blocks affect the appearance of one another, it’s nice to know before you sew! Experience and practice are also the best antidotes if you suffer a lack of confidence in this area.
Quilts made up of simple repeated blocks can take time to lay out until you are satisfied.
When I am making a quilt with lots of repeated blocks in varied fabrics, I always do a trial layout of my quilt blocks on the floor or a wall. Some layouts will always be more visually appealing than others, partly due to colour value distribution. There are usually lots of nice layouts, so it is silly to choose a jarring one that will disappoint you just because you didn’t experiment a little with block placement. And don’t stress about getting the “right” layout. There will be lots of great combinations. Just choose one you like.
So, remember: the Colour Value of a fabric (or even a whole block) is simply how light or dark that sucker is. But this is always assessed in the context of surrounding fabrics.
That’s pretty simple right? Right!
Where it gets trickier now, is to start thinking about how to determine the relative colour values of fabrics of unrelated colours. That is, between tints and shades of different colours (hues) rather than of the same hue. And then there are tones…… OK, I am thinking we should quickly define hues, tints, shades and tones before we go any further.
Hues, Tints, Shades and Tones (only the stuff that is helpful to quilters)!
Hues, Tints and Shades
Colour wheels have far more than the 6 colours you learned at school!
A hue is a pure colour that has not been diluted with white or black. Hues are what we generally think of as colours, and are usually found on simple colour wheels. Blue. Red. Green. Yellow etc. For this exercise, let’s pick one. Let’s say this Purple. Now, a tint is the same purple, but with some white mixed in – or in terms of fabric, most likely with less dye applied to the white background fabric. One example tint of the the original purple is this purple. On the other hand, a shade is also the same purple, but with some black mixed in. An example isthis purple. This colour may be created on fabric by mixing the original purple dye with black dye.
You need to remember that adding white or black doesn’t change the colour (hue), just its relative colour value (lighter or darker). It also decreases the colourfulness (because the colour is diluted by the black or the white).
Tones
As for tones, I’ll let Google explain…..
“A tone is produced either by the mixture of a color with gray, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color (including black, gray and white) reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue remains unchanged.”
GIMP software colour wheel, showing you all the tints, shades and tones of a particular red hue.
The best illustration I can think of is the colour wheel in GIMP software. The triangle in the middle of the colour wheel points to the selected colour hue. The colour graduation along the edge between the hue and white (the lower edge of the triangle) covers all the tints of the hue. The colour graduation along the edge between the hue and black (the uppermost edge of the triangle) covers all the shades of the hue. Every other point within the triangle is a tone of the red hue (ie has some red, some white and some black in it). Except, of course, the leftmost edge of the triangle. This edge is actually a pure grey scale and has no red in it at all.
Comparing colour values between your fabrics
Comparing colour hues
Let’s now go back to talking about comparing value between completely different hues. For example – a shade of yellow vs a tint of green. As I mentioned before, this is where things get a lot more tricky – where a lot of books stop helping you, and a lot of quilters lose their confidence.
Hues have colour values relative to each other, just as the tints and shades of one hue can be compared. Pure yellow is not as dark as pure blue. Unfortunately, it is harder to judge value relationships between hues than it is within a hue family. And of all the colours, colour value relationships between bright hues are the hardest to judge.
Seven bright hues chosen from the pure colour wheel. The lightest is the yellow. But what order should we put the rest in?
Comparing colour tints, shades and tones
It is a bit easier to compare tints, shades and tones of different colours. This is probably partly to do with two facts: they are easier to look at, and they are closer to grey. If they were all grey, it would actually be relatively simple to order them.
Here are the same seven hues from the above picture, but they are softened. Top row: shades (hue + black), middle row: tones (hue + grey), bottom row: tints (hue + white).
To illustrate this, chose one of the tone/tint/shade families above and think of each colour as a grey. Now can you order them? Maybe, maybe not, but you will probably get further than if you try the same exercise with the pure hues.
Now try squinting at them (or decreasing the brightness on your device’s screen). This cuts down the amount of light entering the eye, and allows the rod-shaped light-sensing organs in your eye to predominate over the cone-shaped light-sensing organs. This is a useful trick because rod sensors don’t detect colour, only the cone sensors do. (This is also why at night everything appears to be various shades of black and white and grey).
You are now using grey as a comparison point; a visual anchor. The closer these colours appear to grey, the more monochrome the series becomes and the easier it is to deal with.
Fabrics in the real world are usually multicoloured! HELP!
Flower print fabrics (and one batik) in order of scale. The fabrics on the left have large scale motifs. As you move right the flower motifs get progressively smaller in scale.
On top of all this, we need to know how to compare fabrics that aren’t all one colour!! Very few quilters exclusively use solid single-colour fabrics all the time in every quilt. Perhaps a few hardcore modern quilters do; but most of us use a variety of fabrics over time, including prints and batiks. So, we will have additional challenges in determining the value of these fabrics. There some extra things to keep in mind when thinking about the value of these fabrics.
What to remember when considering the colour value of fabric prints
Mottled solid fabrics (also known as textured solids) are nearly as easy to categorise as plain solid colours. The colour value of these fabrics is the average of the colour across the surface. Stand back from these fabrics and the colour variations will blend together. The overall colour you see tells you the overall value of the fabric.
Small scale prints/batiks behave similarly to mottled solids. A small red print on white fabric will look pink from a distance. A small black motif on white fabric will look grey. Unless you are fussy-cutting these into tiny hexies, treat them like mottled solid fabrics and visually “average” the colour value.
Large scale prints need to considered much more in light of how you are going to use them. If you cut a large scale print into smallish pieces, some of the pieces will be completely different colours and values to other pieces. Determine the colour value of each piece individually. If you are using medium size pieces, be aware that one edge/corner of a piece may have a completely different colour value to another edge. This can play havoc with your placement of surrounding fabrics. The easiest solution is to use large scale prints in large areas – then the colour value differences that the fabric designer chose will work for you instead of against you. If you still desire large scale prints in a complicated quilt design where colour value is important, then it is best to fussy cut them or choose a fabric print with limited colour variation.
Depending on the print, medium scale print fabrics are treated either as large scale or small scale print fabrics. Now you have the skills, you will be able to decide!
I still need help determining the colour value of my fabrics!!
Thankfully there are a few simple tricks you can use to determine the colour value of a fabric, whether it is a solid colour fabric, a batik or a print. In a post coming soon I will go through all the methods I know, and what I think you need to know about each one. You might be surprised….. I personally think the techniques most commonly marketed to quilters are the most flawed. You can do it better yourself without buying a thing! Subscribe to my blog to be the first to know when I publish this post soon!
Remember: using colour value contrast in your quilt can make your design stunning, whether it is a landscape or other pictorial quilt, scrappy, appliqué, modern geometric or anything in between, And stunning is what we’re aiming for! But also remember, stunning is objective…. first and foremost your quilts should be appealing to you…. if you like your design then you will enjoy the creative process. Always be learning, but also make sure you are Quilting your Own Story!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
It’s Tuesday again already! This week we have a classic colour combination that I think I’ll never tire of. Calming blues with warm browns. Inspired by a stunning photo of a fox curled up in snow reflecting blue light….. I’m calling this palette “Blue Fox”.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Blue Fox
The “Blue Fox” colour palette is light steel blue, cadet blue, grey, dark olive, brown, mid brown, light slate and dark olive. Use these different colours in different proportions to get the effect you want. If you use a high proportion of blues, you will produce a very calming palette. Alternatively, focusing on the browns with blue highlights will give a very masculine look – maybe just the thing for a quilt for your favourite bloke? Using the two colour families in equal proportions will give a very lovely. mature palette that would look great on the wall or couch. Like always, there are no right or wrong combinations, just the ones you prefer and those you don’t.
Blue and Brown not your thing? That’s ok!
If you like warmer, much redder colours than “Blue Fox”, you may like “Butterfly Loves Red” instead!
Don’t miss your weekly dose of colour inspiration! Follow along by subscribing to this blog. Or you can find lots of colour schemes anytime you like: follow this board from Clever Chameleon on Pinterest.
Today’s stock photo is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. While there is no obligation for me to tell you where I got this photo, I love to give credit where credit is due. So; this lovely photo was provided by Ray Hennessy via Unsplash.
Join me next Tuesday to explore another colour combination possibility for your quilt projects. In the meantime, look around you to find colours similar to Blue Fox in use, and notice whether there are other colours you’d like to add or substitute. Change it to make it truly your own. Remember: choose the colour combination that You like best…… always make sure you are quilting your own story by celebrating your own creativity!
P.S. If you would like to use this photo for your own projects, you can find all the unaltered Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place in my Colour Inspiration Collection.
Talented quilt designers use colour value in a variety of ways. Choose one or two uses of colour value to spice up your next quilt!
Over the last few posts we have been thinking about improving our quilt designs by understanding the design concepts of contrast and colour value. Now let’s look at six key effects of using deliberate, creative use of colour value. These uses of colour value direct the eye and help the brain to interpret your quilt in a certain way. Most simply put; how you choose to contrast or blend each part of a quilt design can dramatically change how your quilt looks.
1. Use Colour Value Contrast to give a quilt design definition:
When it comes to making spectacular quilts, it is the colour value range that is more important than the actual colours. You can do a fabulous geometric quilt in all pinks. There is no reason at all why you can’t do an amazing flamingo all in blues. A beautiful lush landscape quilt could definitely be created all in purples. As long as you use colour value contrast to define your design.
Where you want a shape to be obvious, it must contrast in colour value with the surrounding fabrics. However, if you want an area of many pieces to be interpreted as a single shape, the opposite is true. To blend areas, the most important thing is to use colours of similar values (ie very little colour value contrast). The second thing to do is contrast them as a group with at least one colour that is quite different – the “us against them” principle.
Take a Jacob’s ladder block as an example (below).
Design A shows a high contrast choice of colour values, where the geometry of the Jacob’s Ladder is the main feature of the design. Design B shows the same design done in multiple colours. The design is still obvious because all the colours are closer in value to each other than they are to the background (white). This makes the brain interpret them as one related entity that is seperate from the background. Design C shows what happens when colour value contrast is not considered in tandem with the block layout. The colour value contrast in this quilt is randomly distributed. The effect is still pretty, but the Jacob’s Ladder design is lost and a completely different (not wrong) quilt results.
Knowing which fabrics will blend or contrast is the secret to successful scrappy quilts, Irish Chains and log cabin designs, just to mention a few.
Remember, deliberately blending fabric squares with their neighbours is a valid design choice. An example of this is the Disappearing Nine-Patch quilt. Knowing how colour value works simply gives you the power to design your quilts to be how you want them.
2. Use Colour Value Contrast to create depth:
In pictorial quilts, light value fabrics create highlights and dark value fabrics create shadows. But there is far more to understand about creating depth in quilts than just shadows and highlights. Did you know that if the values of two fabrics are similar, their shapes will seem closely connected in space and none will stand out from the others? To cause shapes to appear to be seperate in space and stand out form each other, it is necessary to use fabrics with contrasting colour values.
Look at the bottom panel in this figure, This picture appears very very flat. In the top panel however, your brain wants to interpret depth, with the darker trees gradually receding, even though they are the same size as the lightest tree.Have a look at the two simple scenes. The scene on the left is easier for the brain to interpret because the bigger trees are also lighter in value…. two agreeing cues that these trees are the closest.
Also you should keep in mind that shapes made of light colours visually “come forward”. This means they appear closer to the viewer than other areas of a quilt. Therefore, you can deliberately bring things into the foreground of a quilt by using light fabrics. Conversely, you can make features recede into the background when you add them in darker colours.
All of these effects are independent of the colour hue (ie red, blue, yellow etc). It is only the values (relative lightness and darkness) of the colours that matter.
3. Use Colour Value Contrast to convey feelings and action:
Colour values can convey concepts such as mood or change. For example, a dark region in a quilted sky will probably make you think of an impending storm. Conversely, a light patch will convey sunshine. This works even if the quilt is completely abstract and you use colours that are not true-to-life. Yet these effects are mostly lost if the whole sky is evenly coloured in the darker or lighter colours. It is the change in colour value that causes the brain to interpret the meaning.
4. Use Colour Value blending to create illusions of luminosity and light-sinks:
Graduating colour value can be used in quilts to enormous effect. One of my favourite effects created by graduating colour value is luminosity. When you start in the centre of a quilt design with a light colour and add rings or layers of increasingly darker colours around the original shape you create the illusion of luminosity. Luminous quilts tend to convey happiness and hope. Conversely, starting in the centre with dark value fabrics and graduating to lighter fabrics gives the illusion of a dark hole. Both effects are stunning when done right.
Quilt block with four “luminous” log cabin corners.
This effect is often seen used in concentric quilt designs. Concentric just means “sharing a centre”. So concentric quilt designs are those that have a small shape in the centre that is surrounded by echoes of that shape gradually increasing in size. “Around the World” and “Blooming Nine-Patch” quilts are good examples of whole-quilt concentric designs. You can also incorporate luminosity into individual blocks of a quilt, to create lots of smaller focal points. An example is “Light in the Valley” quilts.
Luminosity is not confined to concentric quilts – it can easily be incorporated into non-symmetric designs and landscapes as well. Sunset quilts are one common example of this.
5. Use Colour Value Contrast to make colours more vibrant:
If you place contrasting value fabrics side by side they will make each other look more brilliant. Think of a dark silhouette in front of a sunset…. the sunset is magnified in beauty by the dark contrast. Black makes colours look brighter. White makes colours look darker. These are the extreme examples of this principle. Colours closer in value to each other will have the same effect on each other, but more subtly.
If you only use colours of the same value together, they can end up looking “washed out”. So, the takeaway message? Add a few lighter or darker colours to your quilt to maintain the beauty of your fabulous main fabrics.
6. Colour Value is critical for creating the illusion of three dimensions:
You can represent three dimensions with colour values. Here is a square-based prism in three values of one colour.
Blending colour values gives the illusion of 3-dimensional shape and form to flat objects. This is the same principle as shading in a pencil drawing and is colour independent. Again it is the colour value of the fabrics that matter. You can make round features look three dimensional by gradually graduating from light to dark fabrics in any colour. You can create the look of flat edged 3D shapes using sharp changes in colour value. Tumbling block quilts use this second principle, as do other three dimensional illusions.
Realistic pictorial quilts generally use gradual changes in colour value to convey shape and substance.
So, what’s next?
If you’ve got this far, you’re probably wanting to better use colour value contrast to create better quilts. In this case, there are three things I recommend for you to do next. Firstly, get a really good handle on the theory of what colour value is and how it applies to quilts! Secondly, have a critical look at lots of quilts and decide what you like or dislike about their use of colour value contrast. This will help you decide what suits you and your quilt story. And thirdly, find a reliable method that you like to help you determine the colour values of your fabrics – so that there are no nasty surprises after your quilt top is finished and it doesn’t look right. Then start applying what you know to your quilt design process and grow as you go!
If you want to know more about colour value theory and how it applies to quilts, my next post will cover it nicely. Colour Value Theory for Quilters – What you need to know! is scheduled for the 4 June 2017. Subscribe to read it as soon as it is published.
If you want to see a variety of quilts that illustrate the principles of colour value contrast and blending that I have covered in this post, visit my especially curated Pinterest board: Colour Value Contrast discussion quilts. I have labelled each pin on this board with relevant features to take notice of. Have a critical look at them. What can you notice about the way the artist has used colour value?
If you want to know which tools I recommend to determine the colour value of your fabrics, subscribe to my blog to receive notification or come back in a week or two. I am halfway through writing a post on exactly that!
P.S. If you found this article helpful, please feel free to pin and share, as long as you include attribution to Dione Gardner-Stephen and the correct Clever Chameleon URL. Thanks!
Would you like a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts?
Perhaps you have seen a fabulous quilt pattern but you don’t like the colours. Perhaps you do like the pattern’s colours, but the fabrics featured are already out of print (don’t you hate that!!). Or perhaps you just want to try something different to what everyone else is doing…… Colour Inspiration Tuesday is here to help.
On occasional Tuesdays I will post a photo and a corresponding colour palette using the photo as inspiration. You can follow along by subscribing to my blog. Or you can find all the related posts whenever you like by using the Colour Inspiration Tuesday category tag.
So let’s get started….. the very first Clever Chameleon Colour Inspiration Tuesday.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: Butterfly Loves Red
The “Butterfly Loves Red” colour palette is crimson, fire brick red, peach, tan, slate, dark slate and dark olive. Use these different colours in different proportions to get the effect you want. Using mostly reds with sparing use of the dark colours for contrast will give you a very vivid, warm looking quilt. Predominately using the more neutral colours with the reds as highlights will give you a modern elegant look. There are no right or wrong combinations, just the ones you prefer and those you don’t.
Today’s stock photo is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. While there is no obligation for me to tell you where I got this photo thanks to their open community-minded licensing, I love to give credit where credit is due. So; this lovely photo was provided by Tung Minh via Unsplash.
I hope you will join me at Colour Inspiration Tuesday to explore new colour combinations you could try in your quilt projects. These suggestions are just the starting point…. have a look in your stash or in your local quilt store to see how you can translate these colours to fabrics. See what you can add or change to make it truly your own. Remember: choose the variation that you like the best…. it’s all about you or your recipient at this stage of the process……make sure you are quilting your own story!
P.S. If you would like to use this photo for your own projects, you can find all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place in my Colour Inspiration Collection.
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Remember: using colour value contrast in your quilt can make your design stunning, whether it is a landscape or other pictorial quilt, scrappy, appliqué, modern geometric or anything in between, And stunning is what we’re aiming for! But also remember, stunning is objective…. first and foremost your quilts should be appealing to you…. if you like your design then you will enjoy the creative process. Always be learning, but also make sure you are Quilting your Own Story!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday: a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts.
Join me next Tuesday to explore another colour combination possibility for your quilt projects. In the meantime, look around you to find colours similar to Blue Fox in use, and notice whether there are other colours you’d like to add or substitute. Change it to make it truly your own. Remember: choose the colour combination that You like best…… always make sure you are quilting your own story by celebrating your own creativity!
Colour values can convey concepts such as mood or change. For example, a dark region in a quilted sky will probably make you think of an impending storm. Conversely, a light patch will convey sunshine. This works even if the quilt is completely abstract and you use colours that are not true-to-life. Yet these effects are mostly lost if the whole sky is evenly coloured in the darker or lighter colours. It is the change in colour value that causes the brain to interpret the meaning. 
If you place contrasting value fabrics side by side they will make each other look more brilliant. Think of a dark silhouette in front of a sunset…. the sunset is magnified in beauty by the dark contrast. Black makes colours look brighter. White makes colours look darker. These are the extreme examples of this principle. Colours closer in value to each other will have the same effect on each other, but more subtly.
Would you like a free resource of colour combinations to try on your quilts? 
I hope you will join me at Colour Inspiration Tuesday to explore new colour combinations you could try in your quilt projects. These suggestions are just the starting point…. have a look in your stash or in your local quilt store to see how you can translate these colours to fabrics. See what you can add or change to make it truly your own. Remember: choose the variation that you like the best…. it’s all about you or your recipient at this stage of the process……make sure you are quilting your own story!