Oct

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October 4, 2008

Color and appliqué

Filed Under Color, Designers, Fabrics, Guest posts 

This is quite thrilling. Maria Peagler, author of the forthcoming book Color Mastery, has consented to do a guest post!

Our mutual photographer Gregory Case put Maria and myself in touch with one another, then we found ourselves shoulder-to-shoulder more than once at Quilt Market in May, where much chatting ensued. I was privileged to see an advance copy of Maria’s beautiful book and to write a blurb for the jacket.

Here’s Maria now to clue us in on how to begin our journey to appliqué color mastery.

I’m delighted to be with you here today at the All About Appliqué blog. Thanks, Kay, for inviting me to share about my favorite topic: color. I’ve been quilting for over 15 years, doing piecing and appliqué, and hands down my favorite, and most challenging, part of the process is selecting the color palette for a quilt. For too long, my color results were hit or miss, until I developed my own unique approach to color based on my experience in other artistic mediums, like watercolor (shown below) and colored pencil.

Watercolor by Maria Peagler


When I started as a quilter, I didn’t really understand how to use color effectively in my quilts, so I copied what other, more experienced quilters did. Here’s a block I completed in a Harriet Hargrave Machine Appliqué class. I can’t tell you why I chose these colors, because they certainly don’t reflect my style. I was simply doing what I thought appliquérs were supposed to do.


Because it didn’t reflect my style, I never did anything with it. I believe that’s why we as quilters end up with so many UFOs. We had a great idea that we didn’t quite know what to do with or it didn’t end up as we had hoped.

Fast forward ten years, and here’s my appliqué style now:


What made the difference? Two things really:

  1. Knowing my own color preferences and style
  2. Understanding the DNA of color and how to manipulate it for outstanding results

How did I get there?

It certainly wasn’t overnight, and I really had to find my own way. I tried many of the color books out there for quilters, but nothing struck a chord with me. They were beautiful books filled with gorgeous quilts, but I couldn’t relate to any of them. So I started my own color adventure.

First, I kept a color journal. I filled it with photographs of quilts, gardens, furniture, decorating, children’s clothes, artwork, and anything else that had colors that spoke to me. I needed to find out what I loved and why, and this exercise really helped me. I now have about five of these journals and I refer back to them frequently. Knowing my own color style gave the confidence to use a black background on this Christmas appliqué quilt.

Second, I begrudgingly learned color theory. That wasn’t my intention, but I took a watercolor painting class and quickly learned I couldn’t get the results I wanted without understanding the color wheel. It took a lot of practice and many color wheels for me to finally understand why the color wheel is important and how it is a visual map to how colors interact: the closer together colors are on a color wheel, the less contrast they have. The farther apart colors are, the higher their contrast.


For appliqué, contrast is important to make the appliqués stand out from the background and from each other. In the poppy quilt shown below, I used low-medium contrast to define the poppy petals, and high contrast colors (red vs. green, directly across from each other on the color wheel) for the poppy to stand out from the background.

My top three tips for getting outstanding color in appliqué quilts are:

  1. Start keeping a color journal to develop your unique color vision.
  2. Make a color wheel using your own fabric stash. I have a fun and easy tutorial on how to do this here.
  3. Play with appliqués made with colors in varying amounts of contrast to see which color combinations you like best and give your appliqués great definition.

My quilting style transformed after learning color theory, as I had the confidence to not only develop my own color palettes, but my own designs as well. Now that I understood how to marry my color preferences with color theory, I also included my love for drawing and sketching into my own quilt designs.

My background is in technical writing and instructional development, so after finally “getting” outstanding color in my quilts, I immediately thought, “Why hasn’t anyone ever explained colors to quilters this way? Quilters don’t need to know everything about the color wheel, just the stuff that applies to fabric!”

So, I wrote the book I had wished for as a quilter trying to understand color. It’s for experienced quilters who have a stash and like doing quilts that are stunning, but simple to construct. Focus on the color, not on complicated piecing or appliqué instructions. And it has a fun appliqué project I’ve done in two different color harmonies so you can see the stark difference a color palette makes in the same quilt. The book is Color Mastery: 10 Principles for Creating Stunning Quilts, and will be in quilt shops in February.

It’s been so much fun stopping by and chatting with you Kay! I look forward to your book coming out in March and it will certainly be in my quilting library.

Maria

Kay here… visit the Color Mastery website to read more about Maria’s upcoming book.

Until next time,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs

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2 Responses to “Color and appliqué”

  1. Don’t Miss My Guest Post Over at All About Applique! at Quilts and Creativity on October 5th, 2008 10:01 am

    [...] Kay Mackenzie, author of the upcoming book Easy Appliqué Blocks: 50 Designs in 5 Sizes (Martingale) invited me to be a guest over at her fantastic All About Applique blog.  I reveal my top three tips for getting great color in applique quilts, as well as some storyline about me.   You can read my post here. [...]

  2. Karen on October 6th, 2008 9:39 am

    Wonderful information. Thank you.

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