A Finished Quilt Top - Penny sampler update

 

I finished it!  At last I have a Penny Sampler Quilt top.  My frosty version (previously posted about here and here) of Stitched in Color's design is pieced and I have to admit I'm all paper pieced out!  It's been a few weeks of horses, teapots, teacups, flowers, lots of diamonds and lots of removing paper (my least favourite bit) and it's finally all pieced together. 



The massive Kona Seafoam hanging diamonds doesn't dominate as much now it's a complete quilt top.  The blocks and borders are a mixture of pieced blocks, applique and foundation paper piecing.  I still have to hand embroider the birds tail and feet and the horses bridles on.  Rachel shows how to machine sketch these bits in with black thread but I like the idea of adding some embroidery to this quilt top.

I'm going to hand quilt this one and eventually it will end up in our bedroom.  Trying to keep Wilbur and Charly paw prints off it will be a challenge and it will probably take me all winter to quilt it but I'm looking forward to it!

Linking to all the Friday finishes, Crazy Mom Quilts and

Colour theory

Two of the free programmes that we are exploring in Stiched In Color's class, Color Intensive, are the Palette Builder by Play Crafts and Kuler (also available in an app) by Adobe.  I've been having great fun with them, getting carried away to be honest!

One of our tasks was to make a mosaic colour wheel and to have fun exploring colour schemes.  I loaded my mosaic into the Palette Builder and it picked out the following colours automatically. 

You can move the selections around and set it to match your picks to Kona colours and add in some more  up to 10 selections.  I absolutely love this program!

The Adobe Kuler website allows you to play with the colour wheel and use colour schemes to build a palette, like complimentary (opposites on the colour wheel e.g. green+red) or analogous (next to each other on the colour wheel)

or triadic (3 points equidistant from each other).  I love how this last one just jumps out especially the blue/greens. 

In addition you can pick odd combinations like compound or do your thing in a custom setting.

If you want to adjust a colour you can click on it to highlight it and use the sliders to change the hue and the saturation.  It's great fun!  You can save your palette and share it with others  and explore what others have done. There is also an option to add a photo similar to PlayCrafts and pull colours out so I did it again with my mosaic above.

The programme can automatically pull colours from your image and you can play around with them in edit mode. 

And if you want to know what Kona colours these correspond to you can grab a screenshot and up load that to Palette Builder! 

Colour choice is a very personal thing.  You may have noticed I've been using lots of blue lately!  I've tried hard above to try and use other colours and I had tons of fun!  Next time you are looking for colour inspiration why not try the Palette Builder or the Kuler website, or both? 

And I just couldn't resist leaving you with this!  Not sure I'll ever make anything with this many browns but I really like that Windsor Blue.  There's no hope for me!

Colour Intensive

I thought I knew a lot about colour from my photography.  I knew about the colour wheel and primary, secondary, complimetary and analgous colours.  I knew about colour spaces and calibration, from camera, to computer, to monitor, to printer, but colour theory for fabric has whole lot more going on.  One colour, just the wrong tone, can throw off a design and make a quick trip to the quilt shop, become an hour of hunting through bolts to find the one or two fabrics that work.  So in order to expand my comfort level with colour in the quilting world, I signed up to Stitched in Color's online class Color Intensive.

It's a 5 week class working through theory, palettes, some practical projects like a tote bag and there's even a quilt pattern.  I had taken Rachel's Penny Sampler class and I am still working on this quilt design with applique, paper piecing and precise piecing.  I loved this class and I'm so happy with the quilt in progress that I had no hesitation in signing up for another of Rachel's classes. 

To prepare for the class Rachel offered a Kona Colour Card project.  The idea is to take the little colour swatches and add velcro to them to allow a side by side comparison of the chips (without having to play twister with the original card) or to lay the chips against a background fabric or prints in order to pull out the colours or tones to compliment a colour scheme.  Coincidently I had bought a Kona Card just before Christmas so this week I've been drawing a grid on some neutral grey card and I've started chopping up the little colour patches.

As they are so pretty in their original form and useful in this layout of tones, warm & cool etc.  we are keeping them in the original order on the card.  This is how far I've gotten:

I can see a whole lot of cutting this weekend to fill this in.  I'm thinking a movie and glass of vino will make this an enjoyable task.  We start on Monday so there is still time to sign up if you are interested in practicing your colour skills or expanding your colour knowledge!

A Finish - Dogwood Cushion

Can you believe this is a practice piece?  It's the first exercise in the Penny Sampler Quilt course over at Stiched in Colour.  We are learning applique techniques and I finished this yesterday evening.  

 

These are not my normal colours but I really liked the pattern in the orange fabric when I was browsing through fat quarters in my LQS.  The cream tone on tone pattern caught my eye.  I have no idea what it is but I bought it in two different shades of blue as well for my Doctor Who Quilt-A-Long.

The black sketch stitching was great fun and not that difficult in the end.  I've always liked this look but for some reason felt it must be hard and shied away from it.  I think I have found my new favourite way to applique!

The course is still open for registrtation here and you can join in anytime.  Linking up to Finish it Friday and

and