Sewing Techniques

Right from the Start

Colour is not outrageously technical or difficult. What we need is colour confidence. Chris Franses and Barbara Chainey take us step by step through using colour and choosing fabrics.

“But I’m no good with colour!”

“Colour” is not outrageously technical or difficult. It is something which influences us all in our everyday lives - what we’re all really seeking is some colour confidence to reassure us when we’re picking out the fabrics for our next quilting project. Whatever colour and fabric choices you make we strongly recommend that you buy fabric you like and then (deep breath) use it.  If you cut fabric up and use it you get twice the enjoyment from it. Consign it to your stash and it may stay there forever or at least long enough so that it finally looks dated and unappealing – ask us how we know this!

Plain Fabrics

Here’s an easy strategy to start you off.  First, choose your favourite colour.  Let’s say it’s blue.  We’ve used one of our favourite traditional blocks, Ohio Star, to show some of the many possibilities you could explore (diagram 1a-1h).

diagram 1 A - Find a pale blue, a bright blue, and a dark blue.  Teaming these three values of one colour in the same project will give you a light, a medium and a dark which you could use for background, main and accent choices.  But of course everything will be blue!

Diagram 1B and 1C - Introduce variety (which as we all know is the proverbial spice of life) by changing the background or light blue for a pale yellow or a pale pink – in other words, keeping the same value but switching to a contrasting warm colour.  See how the contrast between the warm and cool colours makes the selection livelier. 

Diagram 1D - same values of blue, change centre triangles to mid pink

Diagram 1E - change centre triangles to pale pink

Diagram 1F - same values of blue, change background to pale yellow and centre triangles to mid pink

Diagram 1G - same values of blue, change main star points to dark yellow

Diagram 1H - same values of blue, change main star points to dark pink











Still using the Ohio Star block as our example but this time putting it into a basic quilt setting shows how it can be much more interesting to use variations of placement and colour rather than just repeating the same block.

Diagram 2a - three values of blue

Diagram 2B - same values of blue, change background to pale yellow and centre tirangles to mid pink.

Diagram 2C - five blocks of one colour, four blocks with yellow triangles in centre

Diagram 2C2 - again five blocks of one colour, four blocks with pink triangles in centre

Diagram 2D - here there are four blocks of onen colouring, four blocks of an alternative colouring and one centre block in a third colouring.

Diagram 2E - Change centre so it is coloured as one larger block

Colour Play

One of our best buys was a small colour wheel – find them at art shops or good quilt shops – which has a pointer reference system. Now we can easily find complementary colours to use with our main choices and make our colour schemes more interesting. We also visited our local DIY shop and collected up a full set of those wonderful paint shade cards and had lots of fun cutting them up and making artistic colour compositions! This is a great way to play with colour and try things out without harming your precious fabric stash. Look through magazines and books for pictures that you find appealing or striking. You can get plenty of colour scheme inspiration this way and most of the work is already done for you. Really look at the colours in each picture and pick out equivalents from the paint cards – have fun!

Ohio Star blocks showing use of complementary colours

Including one or more complementary colours can really perk up a colour scheme. For example orange and violet are complementary colours for green – not a combination that comes readily to mind perhaps but you can see from the examples that it is not an impossible mix (diagrams 3a-3c).

Diagram 3A - orange, violet and green

Diagram 3B - variation of orange centre, violet background and green triangles

Diagram 3C - another variation of oragne, violet and green

The effects of changing background colour

If you’re aiming to perk things up without too much effort it is always worth considering the addition of a judicious dash of drama to your original selection. Just switching your background value from light to dark can make a huge difference (diagrams 4A-4B).

Diagram 4A - original three values of blue, change background to black.

Diagram 4B - a nine-block Ohio Star quilt, alternating the blocks with light and dark backgrounds.

Patterned Fabrics

So far we have been looking at examples with only solid colours – what happens when you’re confronted with all those yummy fabrics out there in the quilt shops and you’re dealing with not only colour but print as well? Just how do you choose printed fabrics and make them work for you?

A really easy route to colour confidence is to pick out the colours from a main print and use them in a similar ratio, (photos 1 – 3 above). 

If you have a selvedge strip from the main print you may have the colour tabs printed out to make your matching even easier (photo 4).

 
If all your choices are of a similar scale and value you will achieve a blended look where shapes merge into each other and only the colours lead the eye, (photo 5). This works well for quilts using a single large shape such as squares or diamonds. You’ll find fabulous examples of this approach in Kaffe Fassett’s work.

Mixing colours

You’ve decided on a main colour scheme or theme – now let’s be daring and take turquoise/jade rather than basic blue in our next Ohio Star examples to show some of the effects of scale and value in printed fabrics.

Our first Ohio Star block, (diagram 5A) shows four fabrics of similar value. Three are turquoise, one is a complementary warm buff.  The three turquoise fabrics are similar in scale, the buff fabric is a smaller scale print.

Changing the background fabric in colour but not scale of print is what we see in diagram 5B – the four corner squares and main star points still appear blended but the centre square now “pops” right out.

In this diagram (5C) we have changed the large scale floral star points to the turquoise plaid and straightaway the star is clearer.  The scale of the print remains the same but there is a contrast between the straight lines of the plaid and the lines of the background print.  There is also more colour contrast (complementary) between these two fabrics.

In diagram 5D we lighten and brighten the block at the centre by changing the neat buff print to a sharp yellow.

Diagram 5E takes things much further on down a multi-fabric path – now we have two different prints for each of the main “positions” in the block making a total of eight fabrics. Look how far this is from the very first Ohio Star example we gave.

Fabric Play

You can achieve clarity and definition with your fabric choices by including a variety of scale – perhaps taking a large scale multi colour print as the starting point and adding in both medium and small scale prints in different values and colours, (see photos 6 – 8).

Look for different textures in the prints – stripes, checks, spots – to add further interest and contrast to your selection, even when using only one colour as Margery Blundy has in her Blue Ohio quilt, (photo 9).

For colour play we used paint shade cards, for fabric play try old swatch cards from fabric shops, or sample squares from mail-order quilt shops. For playing with big prints and big scale try asking at your local interior decorators for unwanted wallpaper books, these are brilliant for cutting up to try out ideas of colour and scale.

Further information

This article first appeared in Patchwork & Quilting, March 2008. For more information on Patchwork and Quilting magazine, visit: www.pandqmagazine.com.

Chris Franses and Barbara Chainey teach about six classes a year together in a village hall near to Trentham Gardens and have a demonstration stand each year at the Quilts in the Garden quilt show at Trentham. You can find out more from their website – www.chrisandbarbara.co.uk.  Barbara also has an extensive national and international teaching programme, further details are on her website www.barbara.chainey.com.