Welcome to May as we continue Quilter’s Color Quest!

Are your color swatches ready? Today we’re playing with the rainbow via Experiment 6: Including All the Colors. Flip to page 50 to join us.

Our expedition through The Quilter’s Field Guide to Color: A Hands-on Workbook for Mastering Fabric Selection has covered lots of ground so far. This chapter is about grouping colors in families.

Using all the colors doesn’t necessarily mean creating a classic rainbow quilt. When you think of the rainbow, you probably imagine those hues that appear in the sky or simple crayon box colors. But, if rich, pure hues aren’t your cup of tea, don’t write rainbows off yet.

In this chapter of my book we look at three additional families: pastels, dusty tones and jewel shades. The spread on pages 50-51 illustrates these families briefly. Those of us that love scrappy quilts tend to mix up the color families a lot. This gives our quilts more of a wild, carefree personality.

On Friday I received some of my book quilts back from Lucky Spool Media. I had also just finished Confetti, my latest scrap quilt. Together they demonstrate how I gravitate toward All Colors In. I particularly favor using jewel tones, with a sprinkling of pastels and classic hues. I use dusty colors only in moderation.

Look at the quilts you make, the clothes you wear or the way you decorate your home. Do you have a stronger affinity for one of these rainbow families compared to the others? Consider exploring that family directly via the swatch and patchwork challenges this week. Your confidence with color will grow as you become clearer and clearer about what appeals to you.

All of these color lenses also help when making gifts. When you realize that your friend decorates in dusty colors, that serves as a great starting point.

Take the Challenge

The swatch challenge on pg 54 is pretty challenging. To keep focused, fill in just one family at a time, then clear the page and proceed to the next family. It’s really hard to work in the different rainbow families, side-by-side!

I decided to embrace pastels for my color wheel on page 55. Thought you might like to see the swatches I chose!

Keep in mind that there are many more swatches that could have swapped in for the pastel rainbow color wheel. Our swatch library is pretty large, with many similar shades.

After rifling through my scraps for some pastel fabrics, I created three bear paw blocks. An all-pastel quilt would be too soft for me at the moment, so I”m glad I have this punching Kona Fern background going on. It really livens things up! It’s like Easter eggs in the grass. Happy!

I hope your swatches and blocks make you happy this week. That’s totally the point, of course. As you can see, this book is about gaining more color vocabulary and new lenses for viewing color, so that you can unlock your personal preferences and make more quilts that satisfy your soul.

This week, do one or both challenges for All Colors In. Share a photo of your results on Instagram with #QuiltersColorQuest and #QuiltersFieldGuidetoColor. Each month I’ll be drawing one random winner from those who use the Color Quest hashtag. Each photo is a chance to win fabric!

April’s winner is @JeanieTurnBow. She wins both bundles I curated at Sojo Fabric. I’ll be in touch about delivery of your prize! May’s prize will also be a specially curated bundle to accompany one of the color themes we’re exploring this month. I’ll pop in later on to reveal that bundle as we continue on Quilter’s Color Quest.