I dont know how to teach color, contrast, hue and scale. Does anybody have an idea?
To preface this, I do not do scrappy quilts...not that I dont appreciate them and this is not a kick against them.
I have a friend, no seriously it's not me, who desperately needs help in the color arena. All she does is scrappy quilts. I love her and in many ways she is a more talented quilter than I am but most of her quilts are simply not appealing because she doesnt get color, hue and scale.
Intellectually she gets the concept of color but she has no feel. If the she doesnt have somebody pick her fabrics for her, her quilts are either way too busy, way too bland or the colors clash. I know her feelings get hurt when people say a polite thank you and never use them.
Problem is that she has been what I call a closet quilter. She quilts by herself, doesnt use patterns except the very traditional ones, doesnt take classes and is working off of an older stash that she picked up willy nilly at sales. We were in the LQS and she didnt have a clue what pre-cuts were and why would anybody buy FQ's and not several yards of one fabric.
She also wants to use up this tub of mismatched older fabric. Bluntly put, she has huge chunks of ugly fabric that doesnt match itself or anythingelse. Like some horse fabric, some patriotic--only dark though, some cool modern retro stuff but no coordinating lights and now that line is sold out, a bunch of older calicos in odd cuts and dated colors. IMHO, she is going to spend more money trying to get stuff to match this fabric than if she gave it away and started just buying fresh for a single project.
We are going to make a log cabin quilt and yesterday we went to buy fabric to match some of her existing fabric and that is when I realized she had no concept of scale or hue. She wanted to do this quilt in oranges, greens and yellows and asked for my help picking. Sounds cool I love brights. She has some fabric in this colorway that she wants to work into a quilt. It was over an hour to make her understand that not all yellows were going to read light in this scenario and no you cant throw some olive green and burgundy batiks in with 30 calicos for punch....well you could but even your mother is not going to put it on her bed.
I want to help her because she loves quilting and is actually fairly good at it. She can make flowers and feathers FMQ which I could not fathom doing!
The only thing I can think of is I would like to see her do a few Moda projects or some of those Amy Butler ones where you can buy the whole line and use it to make a specific pattern or even a Joann's BOM. Not my thing but I would be willing to do them with her so that she could get some feeling for color.
I hate to see all of her work go unappreciated.