I Love Color!

I think I can safely say that the main reason people get involved with stitching is because they love color. Sure, there's also composition, pattern, and texture to consider - but the main attraction has to be COLOR.

Color is the thing that grabs our attention when we walk into a stitchery store and see a wall of hand-painted canvases....or a wall of threads.

And when you lock eyes on a canvas that makes your heart race and you practically start drooling -- isn't it the colors that make you fall in love with it? Well, sure, the subject is primary too.... but what if it's an abstract geometric? Isn't it the color that sways you into purchasing it?

Or here's another scenario I'll bet you're familiar with: you spot a stitchery piece on the wall and you love the design but you immediately start thinking," Wow, I really love that piece, but I'd like to do it in purples...or greens...or turquoise...." (Have you done that once or twice, or maybe a zillion times?!?)

Well then, I rest my case. You're a color lover, just like me.

One of my favorite stitched pieces is this Genny Morrow design, WHEELS OF COLOR:


This is really one of those masterpiece designs that unabashedly celebrates color. As you can see, each wheel is a different color. In addition, each wheel is stitched in a different pattern, which also makes this design a clever sampler of many types of stitches as well. So not only is it pleasing to look at, it's also instructional as well - a stitched reference guide, if you will.

Every time I look at this piece, hanging in my hallway, it reminds me how much I love color....and stitching!

Color Changes Everything

Speaking of color, here's an interesting example of how much color can change the feeling of a design. When I originally designed FLYING GEESE I was totally focused on using blues, greens and purples. And it turned out just like I envisioned it - very yummy in those totally cool colors. [I used Overture V115-Delphinium for the variegated thread; Watercolours 068-Mediterranean is also similar.]

This design, by the way, was the first quilt I did by mixing in DMC floss with my usual #5 pearl cotton colors. It finally dawned on me that if I incorporated floss, I could expand my color palette a bit more. DUH! (Sometimes the simplest ideas take the longest to penetrate).

Anyway, I had so much fun adding floss to the quilts, that I designed several more in the "Color Study" series. In the FLYING GEESE design, the "main elements" of the big triangles and main borders are done in the #5 pearl cottons, but the background patterns are done with floss (which was easier to stitch with than the pearl, but you have to strip & lay the floss, which you don't have to do with pearl cotton).

Then, last summer, my sister Diane wanted something to stitch and she selected this FLYING GEESE pattern. But she wanted to use colors that I wouldn't think of for this design - REDS - and completely surprise me with the results. And so she pulled a palette of various reds and pinks and this is what her piece ended up looking like:


We both really liked the look and feel of this piece; and we were both pleasantly surprised at how much "pinker" it looked, and how playful and fresh the pink and red palette seemed. In any event, the different palette gives it a totally different feel. Now it's very valentiney, or perhaps has a more summery-strawberry-parfait feeling to it...Oh,Yum! Isn't color delicious!?!

More Starry Thoughts

I recently received an email from a stitcher who informed me her local stitching guild was going to work on my STARRY NIGHTS design, over a two-month period. And because some of the stitchers were interested in changing the colors in the design, they were first going to have a meeting to discuss color theories and possibilities...and she also asked why did I include the greens in the project, when the variegated skein of "Elderberry Wine" didn't have any green in it.

It got me thinking about why I chose those particular colors for that project. And I realized that other stitchers might appreciate hearing my answer too. Here's what I wrote to that Starry Nights stitcher:

"What brave stitchers you are. I'm sooo glad you are eager to tackle the color changes!I love it when stitchers change the colors of my designs.It's such a fun way to challenge your color sense...and have a wonderful surprise element built-in to your stitching.

And I think your idea of having a color class first, to discuss color options is a GREAT plan! Be sure to bring along a DMC color chart - wonderful for seeing all the color choices - and lots of DMC floss skeins to play with.(The DMC chart also lets you see which colors are available in #5 pearl, and which are only available in floss - another important design criteria that you have to factor in to your color choices). How fun to get everyone playing around with variegated threads and all the color possibilities!!

As for STARRY NIGHTS:
When I was designing this, I wanted a nighttime color scheme, but I also wanted a variegated thread that had FOUR different colors in it (harder to find than you might think)...and the thread I settled on was Caron Watercolours' "Elderberry Wine."

Here's a photo of the thread, which I just got finished using in another new piece, NORDIC SNOWFLAKES. As you can see in the photo, there isn't any green in the variegated skein. Just blues, purples, fuchsias and turquoise.
You can see in the photo above, how all those VERY COOL colors go together and are so similar that there just needed to be an accent color in STARRY NIGHTS that was slightly different than the rest - something to add an unexpected POP ofcolor. So I snuck in some green (just in the floss/background)...which injects a slightly warmer hue into the overall piece, even tho the greens I chose - 992 and 3814 - are a blue-ish green, and seem to echo the turquoise color, 807. (Green is also a calming, grounding color, so it also calms all those jewel tones down.But at the same time, it's warmer than the blues and purples, so it adds a bit of warmth to the design, as well.)

These are the things you need to think about when changing colors in STARRY NIGHTS: Find the family of (four) matching colors to your variegated skein, then "throw in" an unexpected accent color....maybe a gold? or a bright red? a bright yellow? a bright pink? or a clear, pure color against a set of darker, muted colors? Some different color that will sparkle against the others, and make your eye skip around the complex quilt design....and also provide a fun sense of hide & seek/discovery thruout the overall pattern.

You might also like to know that when I was designing STARRY NIGHTS, I wanted to create a beam of lighter color - like a moonbeam - that goes from the upper right corner, down to the lower left corner. Keep this in mind when you stitch your background...and try to use the lighter background colors in that "beam" of light. It's another (subtle) way of moving the viewer's eye across the pattern. And then those dots of green make your eye skip from spot to spot in the overall piece. (Without that green accent color, I think the whole design would meld and blur together - might look rather muddy, overall - and your eye wouldn't see so many of the different shapes.)