I’ve given myself a bit of colour bother! I went for a pick-n-mix tour of my local quilt store. I picked a fabric from the ‘Fantasy’ collection by Sally Kelly. I chose to mix it with a print from the Wildflower collection by Kelly Ventura.
The Fantasy fabric has a variety of dusky colour shades on a dusky lavender/grey background – I tried to find a colour match on a Kona colour card but can’t find one – something between Kona Lavender and Slate. The fantastical flowers and foliage are coloured in shades amongst others, of salmon, orange and pink. Three colours I have difficulty putting together despite them being adjacent to one another on the colour wheel; ‘split complementary’ with blue being the complimentary colour.
Of course colour choice is very subjective; after all it’s hard to declare a colour mix ‘wrong’ if someone says they like it. My subjective view is that it is very hard to achieve a pleasing result by teaming up salmon with pinks or oranges . In fact I got it in a real pickle when I tried to find a zipper tape which would work with both of my chosen fabrics. It was definitely the salmon colour that caused me the problems.
The multi-coloured Fantasy fabric, despite having all three of my trouble-maker colours in evidence looked pretty good with cream, beige, grey or lavender – I wasn’t so keen on the bright purple. Across the salmon fabric however only the cream zipper looked to be a possible, to my eye the rest looked very sickly.
Feeling rather defeated by my pick-and-mix fabrics I returned to Purple Stitches the following week and ‘glory be’ found the perfect salmon coloured zips.
Definitely a ‘cop-out’ in terms of finding an additional colour to use across both fabrics but in terms of revitalising a flagging project finding a perfect colour match was the perfect solution!
Do you have a particular colour that derails your creativity, leaving you stumped, unable to mix it in with other colours?
Linking with Judy for Design Wall Monday.
Allison
PS. I am seriously considering taking out shares in YKK zippers! 😀 From having just one zipper in my stash I now have a dozen. I will soon be choosing fabrics to match my zippers!
“Of course colour choice is very subjective; after all it’s hard to declare a colour mix ‘wrong’ if someone says they like it. ” So true, Allison! What I have found that helps me, is not only the color wheel, but the amount of the zinger fabric…a little goes a long way! Sometimes, all that is needed is just a little pop of accent color. I also like Jinny Beyer’s advice…a dark, a light, and a mixt of mediums and textures. 🙂
That is good advice, thank you Laura. Hum! I think I’m partly stalling on that salmon fabric because it will be quite dominant – just using a few snippets would be better. Now to decide whether to change my plan or not!
I’ve heard a EPP tutor say if you don’t like a fabric you just haven’t cut it up small enough yet!
Bonnie Hunter also says to cut it up smaller if you don’t like it. 🙂
😀