I’ve been working on an impractical color wheel using thread I have on hand, I have a lot of thread, this is a hazard of being a quilter for a long time. Check out my progress over on instagram. This is a class I’ll be teaching in January at a local to me quilt shop. It’s impractical as it has everything to do with what I have on hand, so it is only for personal use. And yet teaching this class makes it very public and each student will make their own color wheel, based on what they have, or want to add to their stash at the shop.
When I worked in a quilt shop a conversation with new quilters would include a quick class on how to select fabrics, and see color for their quilts. Occasionally a quilter would begin with a Quilting, like many forms of art, has an in-built “this is what a quilt should look like” and “it has to be perfect” and an overwhelming sense of “what if it’s not right”. Walking into a quilt shop for the first time with the Big Idea – well…
Color is complicated, and simple.
Color has rules, and those rules give us direction for how to use color to our best advantage.
While color has rules it gets really interesting when the individual person is mixed in. Each individual person has colors they like, and don’t like, this helps guide the choices. Guiding is good.
When a quilter is ready the discussion can expand to things like complimentary, analogous, split complimentary, and other ways of using color effectively in our quilts. As with any other process in quilting it takes some time, and effort to learn. In quilting we have the freedom to make color/fabric selection based on what we like (with great success) or expanding it to include the concepts of color theory.
The more we explore color the less afraid we’ll be of color, the more our use of color will expand. What we put into this, we get out of it…
Mary deTurris Poust shared this Brene Brown by The Work of the People video:
This is the kind of authentic faith living that is calling to my heart. The beautiful thing about this is, the scriptural parallels, how Jesus set boundaries. My sweetie demonstrated it well this afternoon when sharing a conversation with me about him not being a ping pong ball. He set the boundary.
God sets boundaries for us. Jesus has boundaries. Boundaries are good, and healthy. Doing the work will be worth it going forward. Part of this is summed up in my 2018 Word of the Year – Connect. This will, be a fascinating year.
Just like learning, exploring, and playing with color takes time to learn, and become intuitive; developing, and growing boundaries will take time. Part of this will be paying attention to when I get my back up, and examining what’s really going on and figuring out where to set the boundaries.
In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy Christmas. In the spirit of connecting more deeply the mornings will change, focusing on the Son.
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 