Splendid colour tips for quilters: Colour palettes
Developing a colour palette is important when creating a fabric pull for a block, and when that same block repeats across your quilt top. Also if you have defined a colour recipe for your block so that the quilt is built of those similarly coloured blocks.
Let’s start with a quick look at the colour wheel. It can be a handy tool in your quilting process, for planning a colour palette – when you want your quilt to have a deliberate, well-thought-out colour scheme.
The colour wheel works best for a quilt design if you add the interesting group of colours that isn’t part of the wheel: neutrals. Meaning, black, white, grey and brown in all values and shades.
Some precut strip bundles are put together so that their colour scheme is harmonious. I used two such bundles to make my Meadow Flowers quilt and automatically achieved a harmonious palette for the quilt.
Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple, blue-violet and yellow-orange, and so on. This strip bundle represents a wonderfully interesting set of complementary colours:
If you choose a complementary colour palette for your quilt, you may want one colour to dominate and the other colour to take a secondary role. Equal amounts of equally bright complementary colours are likely to make for a loud quilt.
Complementary fabrics often work beautifully when you include plenty of variation in value, print and shade.
Take my Sacrifices wall hanging, for example. It’s sewn entirely from red and green fabrics, which is a pair of complementary colours. When I made the wall hanging back in 2003, I wasn’t thinking about colour palettes or complementary colours. Instead, I picked two of the most abundantly available colours found in my then meagre stash. And I happened to find reds and greens.
In case you are wondering, this wall hanging got its name because while I was quilting it, I sewed through my finger.
Here’s a tip – if you are making a quilt in a single colour and it’s not turning out as interesting as you’d like, you could try introducing tiny complementary colour highlights here and there.
As a rule, warm colours tend to stand out and appear closer, while cool colours recede into the background. In the Purple colour in quilts post in my Splendid colour tips series I mentioned that some quilters avoid combining warm reds with cool blues and purples. Many of us will however be happy to use the contrast between warm and cool colours to their advantage.
The blocks in my Trixter quilt show a warm/cool contrast – though it wasn’t really my goal – but even more than that, they have value contrast. Colour alone rarely creates enough contrast for the eye to read a design clearly. Warm/cool contrast will work best when it’s supported by clear value contrast.
See how my Autumnal Summer zipper bag shows an excellent warm/cool contrast on one of its sides – but there is also good contrast in value.
Nowadays I’ve finally learned to create a rhythm into my “everything goes” quilt surfaces by varying lighter and darker areas and neutral-coloured areas.
One doesn’t necessarily need a lot of neutral – the thin dark lines in my “Elvis Sitting on the Right” quilt surface help establish a structure. Otherwise, the surface might look like a haphazard set of coloured areas:
https://coolors.co/?home
This time, I picked two photos, adjusted the results a little and ended up with two palettes that look practical enough for my next quilts, for example.
I took this picture of my husband walking in a forest in very early spring. The photo brings lovely memories to my mind, and were I to use the palette for a quilt, perhaps I would remember the same things when looking at the finished quilt!
This picture that I’ve taken on one of our trips to Copenhagen yielded a very different palette, which is also interesting!
No matter how you develop your colour palettes – or if you don’t – it pays off to experiment. The more combinations you test and try, the more you will learn about your likes and likes. This, in turn, gives you more confidence to use colours.
And as a bonus from your experiments, you will be making lovely quilts or quilted items.
I’ll be discussing other colours soon, sharing tips and stories from my own quilts. If you want to be sure to get all my colour tips – and possibly other fun updates as well – you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter.
(When subscribing, remember to take the second step: you will get an email asking you to confirm. My emailing system can only send you the newsletters if you have clicked on the button in that email.)
Three ways to use the colour wheel
I will share three ways to build a palette using the colour wheel. There are plenty of others, of course!A harmonious palette
For a harmonious palette, you will choose colours that sit next to each other on the colour wheel. For your block or quilt, you will then pick fabrics in those colours, adding neutrals for depth and variety, if you like. Choose lighter and darker fabrics in those colours to bring value contrast to your quilt – and as you know, value does good work for a visually pleasing quilt.Some precut strip bundles are put together so that their colour scheme is harmonious. I used two such bundles to make my Meadow Flowers quilt and automatically achieved a harmonious palette for the quilt.
A complementary colour palette
Complementary colours sit opposite each other on the colour wheel. In other words, they’re the furthest away from each other, with no common base. The colour contrast between complementary colours is extreme.Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple, blue-violet and yellow-orange, and so on. This strip bundle represents a wonderfully interesting set of complementary colours:
Complementary fabrics often work beautifully when you include plenty of variation in value, print and shade.
Take my Sacrifices wall hanging, for example. It’s sewn entirely from red and green fabrics, which is a pair of complementary colours. When I made the wall hanging back in 2003, I wasn’t thinking about colour palettes or complementary colours. Instead, I picked two of the most abundantly available colours found in my then meagre stash. And I happened to find reds and greens.
Here’s a tip – if you are making a quilt in a single colour and it’s not turning out as interesting as you’d like, you could try introducing tiny complementary colour highlights here and there.
A palette of warm or cool colours
The colours on the red side of the colour wheel are considered warm, while those on the blue side are cool. The temperature of the colours in between red and blue is a matter of interpretation.As a rule, warm colours tend to stand out and appear closer, while cool colours recede into the background. In the Purple colour in quilts post in my Splendid colour tips series I mentioned that some quilters avoid combining warm reds with cool blues and purples. Many of us will however be happy to use the contrast between warm and cool colours to their advantage.
The blocks in my Trixter quilt show a warm/cool contrast – though it wasn’t really my goal – but even more than that, they have value contrast. Colour alone rarely creates enough contrast for the eye to read a design clearly. Warm/cool contrast will work best when it’s supported by clear value contrast.
All colours palette
It’s possible to select a palette of all colours, and that is probably my most typical palette!One doesn’t necessarily need a lot of neutral – the thin dark lines in my “Elvis Sitting on the Right” quilt surface help establish a structure. Otherwise, the surface might look like a haphazard set of coloured areas:
One more colour palette idea
I could easily spend a whole day with the Coolors tool, creating interesting colour combinations based on a photo and browsing through random palettes.https://coolors.co/?home
This time, I picked two photos, adjusted the results a little and ended up with two palettes that look practical enough for my next quilts, for example.
I took this picture of my husband walking in a forest in very early spring. The photo brings lovely memories to my mind, and were I to use the palette for a quilt, perhaps I would remember the same things when looking at the finished quilt!
And as a bonus from your experiments, you will be making lovely quilts or quilted items.
Earlier posts in the splendid colour tips series
I’ll be discussing other colours soon, sharing tips and stories from my own quilts. If you want to be sure to get all my colour tips – and possibly other fun updates as well – you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter.
(When subscribing, remember to take the second step: you will get an email asking you to confirm. My emailing system can only send you the newsletters if you have clicked on the button in that email.)
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