Interaction of Color with Quilt Fabrics

The colors and fabrics that we choose can really make or break our quilts. It's really important that we understand how those colors and fabrics are going to interact with each other and how they're going to fill the spaces we ask them to fill. Here I have aa quilt top that utilizes different areas of background and lots and lots of very long and narrow shapes. So I needed to choose fabrics that had very little visual texture or print on them and no large prints because those prints would be lost and then some of my edges might get lost of my long narrow shapes. When we look at this, we can see that we have two different backgrounds here. One acts as a frame here and then on the outside edge of the quilt too and one acts as a background to all of the long points that we have. I needed to make sure that the background here did not compete with all of my other colors, that it did not compete with all of my other textures, that instead it played well with it. We didn't want a high contrast there. What I did want was a high contrast in my background area so that it could really show off all of these long elegant star tips. So when we look at the fabrics that are at play here, we have very, very simple textures. We have a coloration that is mostly shades and tones meaning there aren't any pure hues. The pure hues would draw the attention to just that one area and I really wanted the whole piece to kind of glow or shine so I chose these shades and tones. Shades are the pure hue with a little bit of black added. Tones are the pure hue with a little bit of gray added. And so we have a nice soft palette throughout, but it is the depth or the contrast of value that is helping us here. Some of our fabrics are darker and some of them are lighter and that's adding to the contrast between one spike and the other spike, not just the color. Now, when we make these choices, like I said, it can make or break the quilts. So I'm gonna show you another quilt top that's the exact same pattern. We'll compare these two next to each other. So here we have a soft gentle palette and here we have a palette that is probably a little bit darker, a little bit more high in contrast in some areas, but unfortunately not high enough in contrast in other areas. So when we look at our background again, we see that we have this one background that we wanted all of our colors to contrast well with. And then we have this very bold multicolored background. Well, unfortunately what's happening is this bold multicolored background here and in the outer border is competing with the colors that we used inside all of our spikes. So they're not really getting the notice that they need. Worse than that, our pale gold here in our outside edge does not contrast enough with our background and so those tips get lost if you're standing more than two feet away from the piece. We really need to pay attention to how the colors that we choose are going to occupy the space we're going to put them in. Just because they look good with the other colors when they're sitting there and you've got them fanned out and you go, oh, here's my wonderful palette for this quilt, doesn't mean it's necessarily going to fill the space well that you're planning on putting it in. One of the great ways to check things out is to actually cut a little window out of a piece of paper that's about the size that you're gonna have that fabric B and then see what it looks like contrasting to the fabrics that it's going to be next to. So here, this was definitely not a win whereas here we've got high contrast. So these color choices are much better suited for this pattern than these color choices are. Now, in another combination here, I've done a Seminole patchwork and in this piece we have some good contrast, but it's, again, it's very tonal. All the fabrics kind of work with each other because they're mostly tones with a few shades thrown in and they were all built around this outer border fabric. But each of these piece sections includes a light or a dark for the background and the opposite for the foreground. So here we have the darker brown, the duller brown with a slightly more intense red. Here we have the red as the background with the clearer blues and greens as the foreground. Now, this piece which includes very similar piecing and so here we have this same design there, the contrast are higher and the piece is actually a little bit more interesting because of that. So here we have two different backgrounds and then a piece here in the foreground that has both of those colors in it. Here, we have much higher contrast, very dark with very light. We also had the opportunity of bringing in more print on this one. So we have some interesting prints in between the rows. The fact that we have more solid colored fabrics plays better off of those prints when we bring in a print whereas in this one, most of the fabrics have some sort of prints in them. It's the blocks or areas where the contrast is made from no print that the actual design shows better. So it's not just the colors that we choose. It's actually what's on the surface of the fabric that's important too. We have to get away from the idea of buying fabric because it's pretty and then trying to fit it into a quilt. Instead, we should buy fabric because it's useful and then we have this massive wonderful palette from which to create our work with. So don't just consider fabric for their colors but also for the textures that are printed on them. And don't just buy the fabrics that are pretty. Buy the fabrics that are really useful. And then before you cut into them, try to get an idea of how they're gonna play off of each other, what their interaction is going to be. We call it it doesn't go with. Well, the problem is sometimes it goes too well. What we want is to understand what its contrast is gonna be and how they're going to interrelate with each other. So make sure that you do those little practice pieces and say, okay, this is the contrast I'm looking for or this is not the contrast I'm looking for and make your choices accordingly. It will make your quilts much more attractive and you'll end up with quilts that look the way you want them to in the long run.