Christy's Corner: Color Play

Posted by Christy Zawodniak on

Happy Monday my quilty friends!

This morning I wanted to talk to you about color play.  This past weekend I was working on a 3-yard quilt sample out of our brand new Halloween Fabric.  Our idea was to pair this fun fabric with our luscious chocolate fabric.  Great idea - all chocolate, what could be better - right?   As I started putting together this fun project, it felt dark and lost.  The orange is Halloween Orange; pairing with the black background Hershey fabric then adding the background of chocolate it was too dark.  Then I started to ask questions, am I ok with this being dark?  If I give it a grand baby then I won't have to worry about getting it showing dirt - right?  All good questions; however, I really wanted the (2) feature fabrics of the chocolate candy bars to pop.   This meant that the chocolate fabric was not the right answer.  

This morning I popped the fabric into my Electric Quilter 8 software and quickly replicated the pattern and then re-colored the quilt.  I think the results speak for themselves:

Original:

 

Recolored:

Now to reflect - what did this teach me about color.  Contrast is our friend.  Adding a light or other contrasting shade to a dark and medium to dark background fabric causes the pattern to take better shape and allows the fabric to really stand out.  As quilters we strive to match colors and themes, but in the effort to always try to match we can lose the pattern of the quilt or the pattern in the fabrics.  Contract can come in many different colors.  Black can be a contrast color to all bright fabrics.  As can red be a contract to all white and tan foreground blocks.  Contrast is important and as quilters contrast is just as important as matching.

Don't be intermediated by color - how we learn is to try.  Sometimes it is not what we expected and sometimes it is better.  I want to encourage you all to try and work with color play.  You will never know what works till you try.  

Happy Quilting!

Christy


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