all about the Color Swatches
The Quilter’s Field Guide to Color has something quite special tucked in the back of each book. It’s a heavy weight paper rainbow of colors, 150 in all!
To get the most out of your journey, you must, must, must cut out those color swatches. They’re a great tool for creating your own color palettes, plus you’ll need them for the exercises in the book.
Cut into a book? Eeek! I totally get your reluctance. Let’s take the plunge together, shall we?
First of all, the color swatch pull-out is perforated along the edge that joins the pull-out to the book. Bend the perforated edge back and forth to loosen it. Then carefully tear the color swatch pull-out away from the book. Nice and clean. See, that wasn’t so bad.
The color swatches themselves are not perforated and will need to be cut by scissors or rotary cutter. Don’t worry, cutting paper is no harder than cutting fabric. Maybe easier? Anyways, I suggest you start with a long ruler and a rotary cutter that you save for paper and crafting.
Cut long strips across the top of the swatch card, releasing row after row of swatches. Use “spider hands” to apply pressure to the ruler as you cut. Let the hand travel up the ruler as you cut, to prevent the ruler from rotating or slipping.
Next release individual swatches. You might like to use scissors for this step. Sit down and relax, drinking in the colors as you create a growing pile of swatches.
Or, if speed is more your thing, do this step with the rotary cutter too. A small ruler works best.
This is a good time to make corrections as needed. Shave off any lingering neighbor colors on the swatches so that each one represents a single, pure color.
Are you wondering where these colors came from? They don’t correspond to any one solid fabric collection. Instead, I got to create them! I chose colors using real solid fabrics until I was happy with the assortment.
Then I gave them names. That step was super challenging. Of course, I got lots of ideas from the various solid fabric swatch card catalogs that I own, but I also did online image searches to get ideas for names. The only name I regret is “flesh”. I know I saw that name somewhere else, but I should have thought it through. Not a good choice at all. My apologies.
After choosing solid fabrics and giving the colors names, I had to translate them to Pantone colors so that they could be printed on paper. Some of the translations were less-than-ideal, so you’ll see swatches like #106 Surf and #107 Seafoam that look more alike than intended. It was a tricky process!
But now they’re here and ready for us to play with! I couldn’t resist putting mine in rainbow order during the cutting process. Color, color!
As you cut out your color swatches, I hope you enjoy discovering all the colors and their names. Fingers crossed, you find all your favorite shades! I have a favorite or two in each pile. What about you?
p.s. Quilter’s Color Quest starts in March. Cut up your swatches now to get ready!
p.s.s. If you own the book, consider writing a review on Amazon. There is some confusion in the current Amazon reviews that all the color swatches were expected to be perforated. If you know where this idea comes from, please let me know. I don’t remember giving that expectation, but I apologize for the miscommunication if so.
