Originally Posted by
tallchick
...I have been accused of being far too subdued in my color choices.
Subdued is often more a function of lack of contrast in values across a quilt face. Play with not just the colours chosen but the values they contain (see colour wheel, below).
For instance, one suggestion was to do a quilt in pink and aqua. That could end up being a very subdued quilt indeed, but what if you make the pink a dark cerise, and the aqua both a traditional pale blue-green AND a rich, electric teal?
Jean Wells always says, choose a palette and then add a drop of "poison"...usually a colour directly across the colour wheel from whatever you are mostly including in the quilt. In the pink and aqua quilt that might be bright chartreuse or a deep purple.
To add interest to a quilt, ask how you can insert contrasts....contrast in scale (one huge block, a couple medium, many small), a contrast in value (a block in a monochromatic scheme but with lights, darks and mediums of that colour), or contrast in colours (three colours equidistant from each other on the colour wheel = triadic colour scheme), or contrasts in shapes.