Total Color Tuesday--Last One!

We've done it! We've made our way through all the color harmonies presented in Color Magic for Quilters. By the way, this blog series in no way replaces you buying the book. I've only looked at the color harmonies. The book presents a wealth of other information, "workshop" exercises, tons of examples, and several patterns that will help you explore the harmonies in greater depth. This book is a fantastic reference--several women in my guild swear by it and I've really enjoyed my practice of working my way through each color harmony. Not only do I feel like I've broadened my color horizons, but I also know my stash a whole lot better. I'll be using this book as a reference forever after.

So put Color Magic for Quilters on your holiday gift wish list!

With no further adieu, onto the last two color harmonies.

Throw 'Em All in There

 For this color harmony, you just use 'em all. Or, at least, some significant quantity of the colors on the color wheel.

Your first thought might be, of course, scrap quilts. And yep, those are a great example of this color harmony. Some well-known quilters have said that the more colors you use in a quilt, the better they all work together. There is still some art to doing this well, though--you will want to consider having a place for the eye to rest and so forth. But as usual, it all depends on what effect you want to achieve in your quilt. Maybe you don't want anyone's eyes to rest anywhere!

So here are a bunch of fat quarters I've matched up to various points on the color wheel. You'll note, of course, that several of the fat quarters are multi-colored. That, of course, works well in a color harmony that uses everything! Additionally, those kinds of fabrics will help everything play nicely together.

Here are the same fabrics re-arranged.

What do you think? Would you make a quilt like this?

I can see it.

Another way to approach this--and the way most of us are probably accustomed to--is to find a multi-colored focus fabric and then work off that, but pull several more of the colors off the focus fabric than we might usually. So here I have a multi-colored focus fabric that manages to hit almost every color on the color wheel (although sorry--I covered up some of them with my fat quarters). Then I found fat quarters that picked up a lot of the different colors. This is clearly an example of the multi-colored color harmony. Obviously quite workable.

Once again, the Ives Color Wheel (a.k.a. 24-Point, or the one used in Joen Wolfrom's 3-in-1 Color Tool) was intimidating to my stash. They cowered in fear. I just don't have enough fabrics to really work with the whole 24-pointer on this one.

Of course, this color harmony doesn't mean you have to use every color, just a lot of them. I simply moved on. I have other things I want to accomplish again!

Throw 'Em All in There, But Have One Stand Out

This is simply a twist on the one above. You're still using a boatload of colors, but you're using a bunch of one color to make it stand out. This one is, more simply speaking, multiple colors with one main color.

I didn't bother with the usual color wheel pictures on this one because, well, you get it. But it did give me a chance to mess with a fabric I just bought during the Black Friday weekend online fabric sales. I got the main focus fabric in this picture from Fat Quarter Shop on super-duper sale. I ordered two yards but they only had a yard and a half (plus a few inches) so I took whatever they had left. It's a wonderful, vibrant, chaotic fabric that I have no idea yet what I'll do with but I can't wait to figure it out! Serious love fest with this fabric going on!

Anyway, I pulled a bunch of greens to make that the main color, but it plays up against all the riot of color in the main fabric.

Yep, this would definitely work.

Play time!

This is it. Your last opportunity to play along. As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use any of these types of harmonies in a quilt? (As a note--I'll leave all these links open until December 31 so you can play catch-up if you want. Thanks for your patience as I went through this process--I learned a lot, and hope you were able to expand your color horizons as well!

Total Color Tuesday--Gettin' Bizzy

Sorry--last week totally slipped my mind. I was in a Black Friday Sew-In Frenzy all weekend! Got a lot done, but completely blipped on Total Color Tuesday. However, I've discovered we only have two weeks left--this week and next, and we'll be done with our color study. Or, at least, we'll be done with this particular book. Next spring my design study group will be focusing on, yes, you guessed it.... color. So you may be seeing more but it'll have a very different feel. More show n' tell, I suspect.

In any case, back to Color Magic for Quilters and this week's color harmonies. We're gettin' bizzy and inviting all sorts of colors to the party!

Skip, Skip, Skip to My Lou

So in this week's first harmony, we're hopping around the color wheel on one foot and picking up every other color to use in our project.

This is a good harmony for you indecisive folks out there.

The technical term for this one, if you want to impress the troops at an upcoming holiday party, is "full range of alternates." Doesn't that make it sound all scientific-artsy?

I rather arbitrarily started with green and started hopping, which gave me green, blue, purple, red, orange, yellow. (My red looks a little purpley here but trust me, it's red.)

I could see this as a baby quilt, of course. Lots of fun contrast. I could also see doing a scrap quilt with this in a wide range of values--my colors here are all pretty saturated because it's faster for me to put together these harmonies that way. If I wanted to futz with it, I'd have some tints in there (those are hues with white blended in) to soften it up. Maybe even go all Easter Egg on it with a range of pastels. If you used shades (hues with black blended in) you'd be heading into Amish country.So, some definite possibilities there.

The Ives Color Wheel (CMYK, or the one that Joen Wolfrom favors) is a whole different matter on this one. I imagine these color harmonies would be defined somewhat differently. Skipping every other color on a 24-point color wheel looks very different from skipping every other color on a 12-point wheel. I didn't even bother going into my stash--I'd have been here all night.


 

Meet the Angles

 Now we're into triangle color harmonies. Toning it down a bit and sending a few colors home from the party early.

Colors on a triangle, which you may know as a "triad," is more familiar. These colors are naturally balanced--nature loves a triangle.

We're probably most familiar with the primary color triad: red, yellow, and blue. Can you say, "baby's room?"

There are, of course, the secondary color triad (orange, green, and violet), and the tertiary color triad (yellow-orange, blue-green, and red-violet).

 I went simple and stuck with the primaries. Again, my red is looking terribly purple-ish in this picture. Sorry about that!

 In the Ives color wheel, we have a lovely combination of yellow, turquoise, and magenta.

 

Margarita, anyone? There's not even any snow on the ground yet where I live and already I'm thinking of tropical beaches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Angles Bring a Friend

 

Start with your colors on the triangle, then jump across the color wheel from one of those colors to find an accent. 

I jumped across from red to pick up green.

For the Ives wheel, I went across from the turquoise to pick up orange.

Now I want a mojito. And a beach chair.

Play time!

Your turn! As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use any of these types of harmonies in a quilt?

Total Color Tuesday--Skipping About

We're playing hopscotch all over the color wheel this week. Three color harmonies again. The first one is actually pretty closely related to last week's; the second two are related to each other.

Two Colors, Four Colors Apart

 Start somewhere on the color wheel and choose your color. Then count four colors over, and the fifth color would be the other color you would use.

You're pretty close to complementary so you've got the pizzazz of that combination but it's just enough of a tweak to the side to make it a little different.

I could see putting this red-purple and yellow together if I had a variety of tints and shades of  each of them. Could be pretty.

Using the 3-in-1 Color Tool, even at four colors apart the colors are much closer together on the color wheel than on the standard wheel. Divided into 24 segments, five colors apart on this wheel is the equivalent of 2 1/2 colors apart on the standard 12-point wheel.

So starting with yellow again, I land on blue-green for the second color. I dig this combination. Very tropical. It also works nicely because I have a blue-green that includes some yellow hiding in the background, so I could see myself putting these two into a quilt. I'd probably include a nice, bright white. Summer, here I come!

Three Colors, One Color Apart

In other words, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color...do si do, change partners, do it again...

I decided to stay on one side of the color wheel and did purple, blue, and green. You could, of course, start closer to the turning point and have both warm and cool colors in a single quilt with this color harmony for an entirely different effect.

I wasn't keen on the dark versions of all three colors together, so I decided to play a little more with contrast.

I switched out the dark blue for a light blue. I'm still not keen on this one. That being said, I could see doing something very scrappy with all sorts of purples, blues, and greens on a white background. That would probably work really nicely.

ZING! Here's the same color harmony on the 24-point color wheel. Again, subdivided more, you have less division between colors when you skip around. I ended up with magenta, orange, and red. Wowzer.

On the other hand, black background and you've got something funky going on. Again, with maybe a little more contrast happening (shades and tints of these colors), it could be pretty exciting.

Three Colors and an Accent

In other words, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color...then take a big leap across the color wheel and find the opposite of that middle color and grab its hand for a grande allemande...

Okay, so that's a little long for a square dance call. But you get the idea.

Back to the standard color wheel: I started with my three original colors: purple, blue, and green. That makes the accent color orange (the opposite of the middle color, blue).

This time I went into my fat quarter collection and I was able to put together four fat quarters I could easily imagine putting together in a quilt. Some of that is, of course, that my blue fabric also has green and hints of orange, so it pulls everything together.

This combination, I dig.

For the 24 point color wheel, the accent color becomes aqua green.

I've been in a very aqua and turquoise mode lately, so I have plenty of that in my stash suddenly. I used the same red, orange, and magenta fat quarters from earlier and pulled an aqua-green fat quarter to go with them. These particular values of these colors are a little intense but, you know, it would work on a black background? I could see something really interesting that was primarily the warm colors with just little bitty pops of the cool sprinkled through it. It would still be intense, but could be really eye catching.

Play time!

Your turn! As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use any of these types of harmonies in a quilt?

Total Color Tuesday--Twosies All Around

We're doing three, count 'em, three color harmonies this week! They're all closely related, so just follow along in your songbook and we'll all hit the same note at the end.

Two Colors, One Color Apart

This one is pretty easy to figure out. Choose a color, skip a color, find the other color.

In some regards, this has a very similar effect as analagous colors would. You're still pretty dang close to one another on the color wheel, so you're related. But you're just far enough apart to create a little bit more visual pizzazz.

In my example here (let's look at the standard 12-point color wheel first), I started with purple, skipped over red-purple, and went right to red. If we'd included the red-purple in there, we'd have an analogous harmony.  It would be all sorts of calming, as analagous can tend to be. But by ripping out the center color and leaving the two outies, you get rid of a bit of the calm and find yourself feeling just a little bit zingy.

Pulling fabrics from my stash, here are my purple and red examples. I do actually really appreciate a good purple and red combination. If I used these two fabrics I'd want some blenders, or perhaps just shades and tones, to give it a little more interest. Or maybe just combining these with a bright white (if I wanted excitement) or a light gray (if I wanted to tone things down a bit). Pairing it with black would be heading in the direction of an Amish effect.




If you go back up to the first picture you'll see I also included the 3-in-1 Color Tool version of skipping a color. As always, since that's a 24-point color wheel, the two colors are a whole lot closer together. In that color wheel, violet and purple are the two colors and there isn't quite as much separating them visually.

I'm not sure I would do a quilt only using these colors, although honestly it just comes across to me as a straight-up analogous pair. This one doesn't jazz me as much.

 

 

Two Colors, Two Colors Apart

Next color harmony: Start with one color, hopscotch across two colors, then land with both feet on the third color. Bingo.

So now you've increased your contrast between the two colors and added just a little more zing. This one probably pushes our color boundaries a little more than others--it's not a combination we normally think of when we look at our color wheels. But with a good mix of shades, tints, and tones, or balanced out with some neutrals, this could still be a very effective color scheme.

Pictured--12-point color wheel and 24-point color wheel. I stayed with purple as my starting point both times. (Note here: The color I think of as purple, and is most often referred to as purple on the 12-point color wheel, is labeled "violet" in the 24-point wheel. I decided not to get overly sticky about terminology or I'd drive myself nuts. Feel free to mentally translate if you prefer one term or another. I know technically they're two different colors, that purple and that violet, but in the quilting world, I'm used to seeing what I call purple referred to as purple, so I'm rolling with it.)

 In my scenario with the 12-point wheel, my two colors are therefor purple (hop skip) and red-orange. Oooh. Jazzy.

By the way, have you ever noticed how hard it is to distinguish red from red-orange in your stash sometimes? The fabric I pulled as an exemplar here I always just think of as red, until I hold it up to my color wheel. Nope, guess it's actually red-orange. But if I held it up to another red-orange fabric, it would likely look more true-red. So color is often quite relative.

 Here's my sample for the 24-point color wheel. Starting with purple (oops, violet), skipping a couple of colors in the same direction as above lands me on fuschia. Boy, was I a fan of fuschia in college. It was all the thing back then, and I wore a lot of it!

Not so much anymore. I seem to be in a turquoise phase this year. But I digress.

I do like purple and fuschia together. In fact, I believe I wore a lot of purple and fuschia together in college. You might be able to recall what time period that was. For those of you alive back then, anyway...

And Finally, Two Colors/Two Colors and a Jazzy Friend

So for this one, we stick with the above color harmony but then jump directly across the color wheel and find the opposite. 

Okay, so it's a little tricky to find the opposite when there isn't a direct line. Color Magic for Quilters suggests you draw a line from your first two colors into the center of the color wheel, and then draw the tail of the "Y" from that center point to find your opposite color. Hmmm. To tell the truth, I couldn't exactly decide if I was going green, or yellow-green. It could actually be that I'm going somewhere in that spectrum of green to yellow-green. (Or it could've been that I was doing this at midnight and getting a little loopy with sleepiness.)

In any case, I pulled a green from my stash to accent my original purple and red-orange pairing. Looking at it, my green could just as easily be seen as yellow-green. Or somewhere between the two. This is where color theory becomes less of a science and more of an art.

The 24-point color wheel is even more problematic, trying to figure out exactly which color is directly across. Besides, mine's really really small and I was having problems seeing by then.

I ended up with violet, fuschia, and yellow-green set here. Eye-popping. Would be a really fun kids' quilt or teenage girl quilt!

 

 

 

Play time!

Your turn! As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use either of these types of harmonies in a quilt?