Toasty Teal: More Colour Fun with Stitched in Color
Do you remember, waaaay back in August, we had a lot of fun with a fabric and colour challenge? Every so often, Rachel of Stitched in Color teams up with an online fabric store to run a mosaic contest where you are challenged to choose 9 fabrics to best represent a particular theme and present it to the world. Last time we explored the theme “Summer Crush”. Now you and I have the opportunity to do it all again! But this time the theme is “Toasty Teal”. I really hope you will join in the fun!
Toasty Teal……?
I love the colour teal. I also adore aquamarine and turquoise. And I am not always entirely sure which is which, or where the boundaries are, all being stunning variations of blue-green. It probably doesn’t even matter a great deal for this exercise, as teal is just the starting point for our inspiration. But just to silence any worries, here is the colour that Wikipedia defines as Teal: hex#008080. Teal is the deepest of the three related colours.
As Rachel so ably points out in her preamble to the challenge, teal is a very magnificent and versatile colour. It is fabulous with copper and rust and orange. I also like to pair it with purples or with variations of it’s complement, maroon. Teal sings with dusky pinks and peachy hues. For me teal is strongly associated with water and beaches, and as a regular performer in the most spectacular of sunsets. This teal challenge was triggered by Rachel’s thoughts around autumn, but it is early summer here, and we have already done our fair share of sweltering. But that’s ok, teal works great for toasty summers too. 🙂
My first round of fabric choices….
So with all this in mind, I perused the fabrics at this challenge’s sponsor’s shop, Bobby Lou’s Fabric Factory to make a mosaic that captured these sentiments. Of course, I also preserved my natural tendencies towards fabrics that celebrate playfulness. So, without further ado, I present to you my first mosaic: All Creatures Great and Fall!
Did you notice the pineapples I slipped in there? If you don’t know why, you have some catch up reading to do about the Pineapples vs Quilters conspiracy. hahaha 🙂 Start here to follow this slightly silly thread right back to the beginning, which was actually the post “Digging for Pineapples“, from the last mosaic challenge. Hmmm, anyway, moving right along……
My decision process…..
I started with the Lil Fox print from Michael Miller Fabrics. I really love the little toadstools in among the happy foxes, and the touch of purple of their coats against the teal. Nothing says autumn to me more than fungus. I can never resist taking pictures of curious fungi.
Then I added the buck heads (Art Gallery Fabrics), the petite raccoons (Blend Fabrics) and the hexagons (Art Gallery Fabrics) to emphasise teal and other blue-green tones in the mosaic. At this point there were 3 animal prints already, so I decided to see if I could find more. A seahorse print in coral pink? Perfect! And jellyfish in marine tones? Oooo yes. The jelly fish also pick out the yellow green of the flowers with the foxes. Both of these picks are Michael Miller Fabrics.
Now, to get some colour continuity I wanted to pick out some more fabrics with coral colour……enter the llamas and a hot desert sun by Free Spirit. I just loved adding this fabric, as it not only added support for the coral on the seahorse fabric but added some dark contrast, and extended the blue and blue-green colours by adding green to finish the analogous colour series. And of course, it is just. plain. fun. 🙂
I then added the stripes (called Trinket in Blush by Art Gallery Fabrics), that look like they should be on the llamas’ blankets. These stripes tie a lot of the colours together in one print. Happiness! For the ninth fabric I originally chose a cute snail and leaf print by Free Spirit that added more purple to the palette and screamed autumn to me. But it was really just a tad too busy. Then I found the aforementioned pineapples in oasis by Me+You. As if they were not going in! Sorry snails, you are out. You would make a great backing though!
A very hard choice……
And then, at the very last second, I relented of the pineapple silliness, because I found this beautiful bird print from Art Gallery Fabrics instead….. and if I was lucky enough to win this set, it would make more sense to create something with the birds rather than the pineapples. But I have to admit to being quite torn between them. Perhaps I’ll put the pineapples in my second mosaic…… Of course, let’s be honest, if I was in store right now I’d just buy them both. Hahahaha. 🙂 Here is the selection that I finally uploaded to Stitched in Color….
Want to join in? Come on, it’s fun and good practice!
There are several great reasons to join in this challenge, including two chances to win a fat quarter of each of the fabrics you use in your mosaic! You have until the 10th of December to enter up to two Toasty Teal mosaics in the contest for your chances to win. You can find all the details and the linky here.
Really you shouldn’t need another reason…. But apart from a chance to win fabric, I particularly like and recommend this exercise because it is good for the creative grey cells. As it happens, one of the photos Rachel used to set her mood was the 100th winner of a regular photography challenge run by Mark Wilson at Gizmodo. And Mark’s philosophy towards challenges with tight boundaries is this:
“I was always frustrated by the weekly assignments I’d had in my college video classes, never understanding why I was forced to tie one hand behind my back, creating a story in a single shot or without use of dialog. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized I’d had the rare opportunity: to do isolated workouts for my creativity, to play with a single idea for that single idea’s sake, and, sure, to sometimes fail but have a fantastic excuse as to why I did.”
I see Colour Inspiration Tuesdays and related activities, such as Rachel’s mosaic challenges, in much the same light. Stretch yourself creatively, just a little, often. Gradually, you will grow your design skills, become practiced at finding inspiration and develop your own authentic creative voice. So, don’t pass up this easy opportunity! Do it!
Credits
The photos I used to set the Toasty Teal mood in this post are all from Unsplash. If you would like to use them for your own purposes, they are available to you, no strings attached. You don’t even have to acknowledge the artist who provided them, although I think we should if possible, don’t you? Follow the individual links for each photo, or you can easily find all of these photos and more in my Colour Inspiration Tuesday collection.
Until next time…..
Don’t forget to head over to Stitched in Color for your chance to win a set of 9 Toasty Teal fat quarters.
Also, stay tuned for my Christmas Bells tutorial coming this week. See you again soon!
P.S. Here are two more fun things I think you should know……
Firstly, Domestic Felicity made significant progress on her Pineapples quilt last month. Go have a look and give her your ideas on how she should make this lovely quilt larger.
Secondly, Joy at “Days Filled with Joy” is running a short series of 12 Days of Last Minute Christmas Gift ideas. Head on over to see what you can make for the people on your Christmas list. Or if you have a suitable tutorial, let her know ASAP, as she is currently looking for projects to feature. You’ll like Joy, I promise!
Do you make quilted postcards? Where do you find your inspiration for them?
