Experiencing Color

 I've never taken any formal quilting lessons, nor have I taken any formal color theory lessons. That said, I have read lots of books, and watched countless YouTube videos about both. The funny thing about being self taught is, sometimes I can be rather hard to teach, because when I hear "rules", I pretty much disregard them. I remember hearing that you can't mix yellow-greens and blue-greens together and have a quilt come out well. All I have to do it look out my window to see the yellow-greens of the cactus, with the blue-greens or some evergreen bushes to know that's not a "rule" I would ever follow. You see those colors combined in nature all the time, and I'm not going to discard the beauty of nature for a man-made color theory. 

I love watching Lynn from Cotton Art Studio. She has been doing a series on color, and she always ends up with "this color matches everything". I completely agree! You can take two colors that seem like they don't match at all, and with the right fabrics to bridge the difference, you can make anything match. 

Have you ever seen pics of the results of a fabric challenge? Everyone has to start with one-three fabrics that are the same, then they can add whatever other fabrics they like to make a quilt. The resulting quilts can be drastically different, and I love seeing the results. 

I just finished quilting this quilt today, and you can see there are two blocks in it that use the same pink/orange print. The blocks don't look like duplicates because the fabrics I paired them with are drastically different in value and color, and they bring out different aspects of the print. 

Since I'm not much for rules, I've learned most of what I do through experience. I'm sure a lot of what I do breaks the "rules", but I'm ok with that. After all, there are different decorating styles for a reason, not everyone likes the same esthetic. 

Quilting thread color, so much drama about it, so many discussions about it, so many books about it. The fact of the matter is, every quilter has their personal preferences. I've noticed Donna Jordan from Jordan fabrics almost always sticks with the value of the background color. She doesn't like the quilting to show much, and that's a good way to make it blend in.

I make mostly scrappy quilts, sometimes color controlled, sometimes not. Sometimes I want the quilting to show up more, sometimes not, and mostly, unless I doing more involved quilting I don't care much either way. If there are a lot of different colors in a quilt, I tend to choose a thread that matches the backing. I backed the above quilt with a slate blue fabric, so I used a blue quilting thread. I knew the blue thread would pretty much disappear on the dark colors, but I was surprised to see it didn't show up much on the pink prints either. 

On the pink solid, the blue thread shows up quite a bit, but on the prints, it blends in much better than I ever expected. 

Early in my FMQ journey, I bought a thread set of 40 different colors. One of the colors was a pretty ugly (in my opinion) yellow-green. In person it's a bit greener than my photo. 

Rather than let it languish, I decided I'd use it up right away and get it out of stash, why would I want more of that color? Imagine my surprise when that color blended into almost every color I quilted it on. I've reordered that thread over and over again, and if I'm really undecided on quilting thread color, it's my go-to. I likely would have never bought a single spool of that color, buying a thread set is the only reason I ever had it to use. 

My point is, you can learn all you want about color, but to really get to know it, you need to experience it. That's one of the reasons I love playing in other people's scraps. Someone else will buy things I'd never get, but I learn the most when I'm stretching my boundaries, and realizing I've been limiting myself is quite freeing.