color, color everywhere... how do you pick yours?
 

how do you pick the colors/color schemes for your quilts?

where do you turn for ideas? where do you find inspiration?

color is my BIGGEST "worry" when it comes to quilting. i've only made one quilt and am hoping to learn from others.

thanks in advance.

I actually browse through pictures of quilts already made on the Quilt Gallery on this board. It gives me a chance to look at different colors together and different patterns. Sometimes I just google something like Purple Quilts. I get lots of ideas this way.

And I have found that I actually prefer fewer colors in a quilt than many quilters. I love two fabric quilts, and I love quilts that have several shades of the same color or of two colors.

So, mainly I look at other quilts and decide what I prefer. Hope this helps.

Dina

Try finding a fabric you like that has many colors. Then use that fabric and use it as a guide to pick out colors. Sometimes the fabric will You may decide that you will use the original fabric you chose in the quilt and as the border, or you may not use it at all.
You can also get a book on color for quilts. Certain color schemes work well...like blue and yellow, red and green, blue and green. The more you pick out colors for quilts, the easier it will get.

The easiest way is probably a fat quarter pack from a single fabric line. I don't do that, myself, but it's enormously popular. The books featuring that method are the hardest, for me, to translate into other fabrics, as they seem to rely on the "blendedness" of a single line to work.

More fun, IMO, is choosing a neutral and a few contrasting colors. Many quilt patterns use that combination.

If it makes you feel any better, I finally figured out what to do with a collection of pale pinks and peaches, after staring (or more correctly, glaring) at them for 2 years. They were beautiful together but bafflingly close. I kept adjusting the mix and auditioning fabrics from my stash until I hit it.

I will say that I felt enormously better reading that Kaffe Fassett had trouble picking out fabrics for very pale quilt in one of his books. It's fairly easy to do a lot of pale prints in different colors if they have a common white ground, but get them really close and blendy, and it can look like a blur.

hugs,
charlotte

you can buy a color wheel. you can look on this forum or pinterest. there are some color schemes that work beautifully:
pink and brown
teal and brown
yellow and gray
purple and green
pink and green

Look at the selvage and there may be "dots" on it that indicate which colors coordinate
You can also buy from a fabric collection

There are basic color rules of thumb that are well worth understanding. It doesn't matter if you are talking about fine art, as the linked website is, or quilts. Once you understand them, they become second nature.
http://www.writedesignonline.com/res...les/color.html

There are so many things around you to take color inspiration from. Anything from flower gardens to greeting cards can give you color schemes. Keep in mind that things like greeting cards, birthday paper, and packaging labels on all kinds of products are designed by professionals that deal with color every day.

One of my guilds actually did a "commercial color scheme" challenge. We each picked a "thing" from a bag and that was our color scheme for the challenge. She had fancy napkins, paper towels, greeting cards, candy wrappers, and labels from all sorts of things. There were some really gorgeous quilts produced in that challenge.

Go to a paint store or big box hardware and pick up a bunch of paint sample cards. Then arrange them in different ways to see what you like. Color value is as important as color so you might want to pick up a pair of those "red glasses".https://www.missouriquiltco.com/shop...ew-red-glasses

Often you can follow the colors in a picture for great ideas. Use "google images" to look for images of item, animals, trees, flowers, sunsets, nature, whatever, even other quilts that feature specific colors you like.

Here's an example of a topic I posted using a photo as inspiration; you can see a few blocks others made using this idea as well (I have made 12 of these different blocks but have yet to put the quilt together.)
http://www.quiltingboard.com/tutoria...h-t228715.html

Jan in VA

I tend to pick patterns based on the colors that are used, which means I choose very similar colors when I make the quilt. It's very hard for me to pick a whole new line of colors. I'm always afraid I will work very hard, spend a lot of money and won't like the quilt. If you are looking for ideas for a specific quilt, you can always Google and ask for the pattern name, ie BQ quilt images. It's surprising what you will find. That's a great way to get color ideas. Especially for what you like and don't like.