| Meet the Author Sue Harvey has been involved with a variety of crafts ranging from basket making to folk-art painting for more than 15 years. She has been an active member of the Schoolhouse Quilters Guild for eight years. She is also a member of the Pine Tree Quilters Guild. Sue is an avid gardener. She says, "Gardening is like quilting except you use plants and flowers instead of fabric to make beautiful patchwork." She has been a master gardener for three years. Torn between these two passions, she has taught an appliqué class and an herb gardening class. She has designed quilts for House of White Birches and coordinates the Master Gardener's Herb Garden each summer. She and her husband, Clayton, live in Maine, where the weather perfectly complements her activities -- cooler winters for quilting and warm summers for gardening. Over the next seven weeks, Sue will share with you the secrets to unleashing your quilting creativity like never before. With the Quilting Color Magic educational series, you'll learn: - Part 1: How to make your own color wheel.
- Part 2: The importance of value in quiltmaking.
- Part 3: How neutrals contribute to your designs.
- Part 4: Learn to apply the color wheel to your quilts.
- Part 5: Begin to experiment with color combinations.
- Part 6: Make a bold statement with a three- or four-color scheme.
- Part 7: Use many colors to create beautiful quilts.
So, sit back, relax and get ready to make quilts more beautiful than you ever imagined. We know you are ready to start quilting like a color magician now, but let's start with some of the basics. Color Basics Color gives us our first impression of a quilt. More than pattern or design, it is the one single element that tells us a great deal about the quilt -- and the person who made it. We all have our personal color favorites and like some quilts more than others because of them. You've probably noticed that once in a while a quilt made up of those favorite colors just doesn't do anything for you. You've probably also seen a quilt that is absolutely beautiful though made in colors or fabrics that you would never have chosen. One of the most difficult tasks for many quilters is selecting the combination of colors and fabrics to use in a design. What is it that makes one combination work better than another? How do we choose colors and fabrics from so many available today? The Color Wheel Many of us have never used a color wheel to help make a quilt. Certainly those bright crayon-box colors are not the ones we commonly use. And the colors found in all those beautiful fabrics are not shown on any color wheel that we've ever seen. The color wheel is meant to be a guide in the use and combination of colors. Within its circle are all the tried-and-true methods that will make fabric selection easier. Learning how colors relate on a color wheel helps to visualize how they will look together in a quilt. Commercially-made color wheels (see photo below) are available in most art and craft supply stores. You may also find one made specifically for quilters in your local quilt shop. Be sure before purchasing one that it will be useful to you, as many are made specifically with painting in mind.  | | Click here for a larger view. | The color wheel is split into 12 different pure colors or hues. - Red, blue and yellow are the primary colors from which all other colors are made.
- Violet, green and orange are the secondary colors made by combining two primary colors. For example: red and blue combine to make violet, blue and yellow combine to make green, and red and yellow combine to make orange.
- Red-violet, red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green and blue-violet are the tertiary colors made by combining a primary color with an adjacent secondary color as each color name implies.
These pure colors together with black and brown are the ones found in that beginner's box of crayons -- you remember those bright, vivid colors of grammar school! Quilters tend to think of these colors only in the context of Amish quilts, bright solids on dark backgrounds. You will need to understand only a few more rules to make the leap from pure colors to those with today's popular names -- the rich, deep colors of twilight, cabernet and juniper; the quiet colors of pear, frost blue and butter; and the subdued colors of terra-cotta, periwinkle and sage. Pure colors may be changed in three basic ways: Tint. A lighter version of a color is made by adding white; the more white added, the lighter the tint. For example: frost blue is a tint of blue, pear is a tint of yellow-green and butter is a tint of yellow. Shade. A darker version of a color is made by adding black. The more black added, the darker the shade. For example: cabernet is a shade of red, juniper is a shade of blue-green and twilight is a shade of blue. Tone. A duller or muddier version of a color is made by adding gray. For example: terra-cotta is a tone of red-orange, periwinkle is a tone of blue-violet and sage is a tone of green. Tones may be lighter or darker than the pure color. Simply by adding more or less white, black or gray to a pure color, a fabric manufacturer can create an endless number of tints, shades and tones, thus giving us the vast array of fabrics from which to choose. Certainly the flat, purchased color wheels with their pure colors leave us with a lot to imagine. Try your hand at making a quilter's color wheel. Not only will this help to familiarize you with the different versions of each color; the resulting color wheel will be much more useful with its slight nuances of depth and texture in the fabrics. When completed, your wheel should look much like our example. Of course, your colors may vary slightly depending on the fabrics that you used. Not to worry, again your color wheel is meant to be used only as a guide to help you select colors, not as a rigid tool to dictate color. I know that this educational series will help answer these questions. The basic principles of color theory are presented here not to encourage you to rigidly apply them to your quiltmaking, but to give you a basis to begin experimenting with different colors in your quilts. Many beautiful quilts are used here as examples to demonstrate that these color basics can be easily applied to the real world of quiltmaking. So remember, don't let your insecurity about choosing colors get in the way of starting on a quilt. You are sure to find that many of your intuitive ideas about color are already correct. Let the information in this educational series help you to build on those ideas and develop your own individual style. Next week I'll tell you about the importance of value, intensity, symbolism and temperature when selecting colors for your quiltmaking. Until next time, Sue Harvey PS -- Tell your friends to visit us to sign up for educational newsletters like this. | 
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