color

Inspiration from the Paint Store

| terriaw

I like going to the paint store to look at the paint chips and brochures. The last time I went to the paint store, I looked at these brochures with a different purpose – inspiration for sewing and quilting projects!

I love the southwest vibe of these colors together. Reminds me of the colors we would see when we lived in western Colorado. sigh…

I love the modern feel of this simple color combination – black, grey, gold and taupe.

I like to take a step back and reflect on the feeling I get when I encounter a color or combination of colors. Some colors are cheerful together, others are calming.

Here’s an example of a paint color scheme I like, and the fabrics I could match from my stash. Definitely a spring color combination.

Here’s another stack of fabrics I picked from my stash that most closely matched the paint chips from that brochure.

I made my favorite block, a wonky/maverick star, into a mini quilt with these colors. I’m not a big fan of yellow, so I did a string-pieced center to ensure these colors could take turns being next to each other. I also did a scrappy binding which frames this star nicely. This was a fun exercise because I love how this combo turned out!

I think it’s fun to discover new sources of inspiration. It’s also fun to challenge myself with new color combinations I may not try on my own. I’m definitely going to try this with more of the paint chips I collected.

Playing With the Color in My Scraps

| terriaw

I have been challenging myself to get reacquainted with my stash and my scraps. A couple color-coordinated patchwork blocks seemed like a great use of my time.

I started out with the blue scrap pile.

Since I was on a roll with the cool tones, I continued to dig through my stash for greens, which was really fun.

Then I decided it was time to warm things up a bit, so I pulled out my color wheel to see what was opposite of blue and green. Turns out I needed to find red-orange, so I looked for fabrics that ranged from red to orange. I thought it would be fun to include some pink splashes too.

How fun was that?! No, seriously, it was great fun. I’ve had zero inspiration to use my scraps, so this was a fun challenge. What better way to mix up my stash to really see what I have.

I am hoping to float these three blocks (about 10 inches each) in a solid fabric to make a quilt, something similar to this beautiful quilt, but I haven’t decided yet which solid color to use for the background. Have you challenged yourself lately?

Color Palette – Ribbons

| terriaw

I was happy to hear that Brandi was offering to continue with the color palettes as a weekly post on Friday. Today’s theme is ribbons and trims.

photo from Martha Stewart

I have been slowly building my stash of ribbons and trims, so I went surfing to find a picture of ribbons and trims that spoke to me. I probably wouldn’t make one bag or quilt with all of these shades of pink, but it goes well with many other colors, especially black and gray, so any of these ribbons would make a great accent. I also love the variety of ribbons that are featured, satin, organdy, taffeta, picot-edge (my favorite), velvet (my second favorite), wire, grosgrain, metallic, and more.

I know, some girls refuse to like pink, but I like it, so this palette was fun to play with!

Final Color Palette – Farmers Market

| terriaw

One of my favorite things to do is go to a farmers market, so I thought that would be a great source of inspiration for this final day of the color palette blog walk. Luckily, we have an excellent market here in Madison.

Sometimes I come home with more pictures than produce or bakery from the market.

colors of onions from farmers market

colors of chili peppers from farmers market

colors of flowers at farmers market

colors of globe thistles from farmers market

I adore sunflowers, but I forget to plant them every single year. So I always seek them out at the market, just to soak in their beauty. You can’t have a farmers market without sunflowers.

That concludes my participation in Brandi‘s color palette blog walk. I have had a lot of fun doing this week-long color study. I have also learned a lot, in particular, how to really look at things around me. Hope you found some inspiration along the way!

Color Palettes – Art Materials

| terriaw

Today’s prompt for Brandi‘s color palette blog walk is to create a palette inspired by art materials.

The art materials I work with the most are fabrics. I recently posted an idea I had after noticing a beautiful sunrise.

Here were the fabrics I pulled to represent a sunrise, and the color palette I matched up.

Compared to the actual sunrise photo, I’m thinking I can probably eliminate the yellow, and maybe even narrow down the range of peach and blue fabrics too. How fun to be able to compare these fabrics to the photo that inspired an idea!

Our final prompt for the week is a free day, leaving it wide open for us to find a subject that inspires us most.

Color Palette – Fashion Inspired

| terriaw

The prompt for the third day in Brandi‘s color palette blog walk is to create a fashion-inspired palette, showing colors that inspired you.

I buy almost all of my clothes from my all-time favorite store The Buckle. The truth is, when I walk into that store, at least half of the sales associates yell out my name in greeting. (ahem) Since we are transitioning from summer to fall in my part of the world, I thought it would be fun to show some colors I’m excited to wear as I reach for jeans, long sleeved shirts, and cardigans.

I think I might be into burgundy (or berry) this fall, so I picked this outfit for my first color palette inspiration. In fact, I adore this outfit so much that after playing with this color palette, now I want it! (sshh, don’t tell Dave!) Well, maybe I’ll just take a closer look at the cardigan.

I’m having much more fun matching the colors in these outfits than the previous day’s photos, so how about a second outfit to try. The denim shades were actually fun to try to match.

If you come up with your own palette, be sure to share it with other participants on Brandi’s blog. Tomorrow’s theme is inspiration from art materials, such as fabric, beads, paper, art supplies, or a work of art. I do have a few of those lying around the house, so I hope to come up with something.

Color Palettes – Travel Inspired

| terriaw

This second day’s prompt in Brandi‘s color palette blog walk is to create travel-inspired palettes based on a favorite city, dream location, or postcard.

My most recent trip was to my parent’s cottage on Lake Michigan in northern Wisconsin, so I thought that would be good inspiration for today’s color palettes.

monarch in a coneflower garden

colors of the Sentinel Trail in Peninsula State Park

colors of a campfire on the beach at dusk

colors of sunset over Green Bay

The saturation in some these colors from nature was quite hard to match (especially using the color tool in Word, since I haven’t purchased Photoshop yet). I may not have considered putting these combinations together in one of my sewing projects, yet they work so well in nature. What a great experiment to stretch my imagination!

If you come up with your own palette, be sure to share it with other participants on Brandi’s blog. Tomorrow’s theme is inspiration colors in fashion.

Color Palette Blog Walk

| terriaw

Have you seen this cool idea Brandi came up with to get people together for a week of sharing color palettes?

The first day’s prompt is to take a look at a favorite book cover. What colors does it have? Make a color palette from it.

Since I don’t have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements at home (and I couldn’t figure out how to load a photo into colourlovers.com), I used Word to try this, so I was happy to learn something new in Word while experimenting with color adjustments.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

I have always thought these covers in Melissa Marr’s series were beautiful (great books too), so they were great inspiration to come up with various the color combinations. I could have spent half the day tweaking the colors!

Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr

Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr

Share with other participants on Brandi’s blog. Upcoming themes include inspiration by travel, fashion, art materials, and your choice for the final day. I’m not sure if I will be able to keep up with every day’s theme, but it’s a fun exercise to play with different color palettes and challenge your imagination.

Dreaming of Colors

| terriaw

I finally broke down and bought a Kona color chart from Kathy! I have been wanting one for awhile, but they seem to go out of stock so fast. As soon as I noticed she had more in stock, I grabbed one right away.

I have taken several color classes – fabric and art-specific – over the years, so I love playing with the traditional color wheel. I could just stare at all these luscious colors on this big chart for hours. I can see why Ashley brought one with her on vacation!

This color chart is so much bigger than I realized. It opens not just once,

not just twice,

but a third time.

Oh yeah, did you notice I ordered a few solids in spring colors to accompany this chart on its journey to my house?

I don’t have a big stash of solids, but I love working with them in so many different sewing projects. I usually order Bella solids from Anina’s store, but since I was ordering the color chart, I decided to try a small stash of these lovely solids.

While bumming around on my lunch hour this week, I discovered a selection of these very solids at the local Hancock Fabric store. They seemed to have a pretty good range (which didn’t completely fit in the picture above), so I should be able to stock up on a few more as needed. As needed, yah, right! I can’t wait to go back and get more, after I study my chart for awhile longer.