Quilt color using everyday things

Thinking along the lines of finding commercial places or products to inspire color scemes for quilts, I went to the grocery store yesterday.  The products you see there are colored just for us,  there are thousands of things screaming for our attention.  So I decided to let the kid in me loose and checked out the candy isle.
This is not to say that the orange and blue of Tide or FireFox could not inspire us, but candy seemed fun.

I found that I had already used some of the color schemes. And why not, in this one I rearranged the amounts and had a little less of the orange and more of the white, with a sprinkle of the brown.

Another quilt I made, my husband gave me the idea by pointing out a photo on the wall at Souplantation of blueberries. Which turned into this;

Great color ideas can come from anywhere.

Take a look at my WebSite: http://www.reeskesworld.com/ and happy quilting

Picking colors for your quilt cont.

A great example of what I was talking about last time.  All these fabrics come from the same textile manufacturer, they have the same intensity of color, and most have some green in them. By the way this is just one block so you'll see these same colors repeated over the whole surface of the quilt, which helps it co-ordinate too.  I'll post a photo of the top when I have it completed.

Another really good way of picking out color schemes (CS) is to look at advertising.  Big corporations spend millions on researching colors and how they go togerther, so why not borrow from them?

Seriously, I have often thought of making a 7-11 quilt. 

Or how about an am pm quilt?

These are bright complimentary colors that look good together because they have been analyzed for their intensity, hue, and shade.  Dont' worry about this just go ahead and use the colors as you see them.  The amount of each color is also important.  In the 7-11 sign you can see that the green has twice the amount of the red or orange.  So keep that in mind, but you say I want an orange quilt.  Fine then make the orange the primary color, and use only half as much red and green. Also note that there is white between each line of color.   What about AM PM ?  They all look pretty equal. So you could use them equally or emphasize one color over another, just as AM PM did in this sign.

They used all of their colors, but emphasized the orange.  I think I might emphasize the blue in my quilt.

Check out more of my work at: http://www.reeskesworld.com/

More colors for quilts

An easy way to pick colors is to let the manufactures do it for you.  Often they will produce a line of fabrics that share patterns and colors. The picture above shows one such line.  While the individual colors were quite differnt one fabric in each colorway shared colors with the other colorways in the line.  See the flower print.

Also the use of the gold star, a color found in all the prints, helps the quilt "hang" together.

See more quilts at my WebSite: http://reeskesworld.com/

Picking colors for quilts

For a long time I have really loved putting together quilts and time after time people have told me they really like the colors I choose.

I have thought alot about how I decide on a quilt color scheme (CS for short).  Sometimes it's easy, the colors all coming from one side of the color wheel as in the one above. It has very pale  yellow, through rust, to lots of browns to an almost black/brown.  I just went to my fabric stash and started with brown and then added lights and darks.

Another good way to pick out a CS is to use complimentary color from the color wheel, i.e. colors across from each other. This one uses red/green and really has pops of  color.

Next time: Using a monochrome scheme and color from one fabric print.

See my WebSite http://www.reeskesworld.com/

Weekend in October

 I make quilts, really nice ones.   This quilt is called "Weekend in October" I didn't create the design, but the work is all mine.  It is machine quilted by me, in variegated thread with a  free motion design.

             Want to know more about it?  Visit my Web site at http://www.reeskesworld.com