This week I was happy to read that several Modern Quilting gurus have shared with us their ideas of exciting color combinations.
We all know that colors go in and out of fashion, just as patterns do. A year or two ago I was crushed to discover that it's very difficult to buy striped fabric -- just when I had realized that stripes worked marvelously with my newly developed style of piecing. I made a huge quilt that exhausted most of my stripe stash, and went out to buy more for a second quilt in warm colors, but oops, no stripes. Plenty of polka dots, though.
Most fiber artists that I know don't spend much time in the quilt shop, however, making most of their own fabrics with various surface design techniques, whether dyeing, painting, screenprinting, discharging or whatever. So maybe you will be as curious about what's hot these days as I was.
In a nutshell: gray and gray/beige, orange, mustard yellow, pink, warm dark red, grayed teal.
Should fiber artists spend even a millisecond thinking about this?
Maybe not. But then again, I was present in a room once when a Famous Artist was judging quilts in a juried show, and after some consideration, passed by a quilt that I thought was quite striking. Why? "Because the color palette is so old-fashioned, it just doesn't look fresh." And if you, like me, are toying with the idea of doing an article or book or pattern or workshop that might appeal to quilters who do frequent quilt shops, perhaps you would like to think that your samples look fresh rather than old-fashioned.
A few months ago you, my friends, pitched in and helped me win a contest in which I wrote about what I thought Modern Quilting meant. My prize included a nice little pile of fabrics that, sure enough, fit in nicely with this new color vibe. In furtherance of my own commercial development plan, which I'm not yet ready to go public with, I'm going to use some of these new trendy colors to make a quilt! And since my stash dates back decades, I can probably go into my drawers and find a lot of fabrics that are just as trendy to go with these new ones, saved from the last time orange and gray went around. When was that -- the 60s? the 70s? the 80s? I can't remember.
I think I am not younger than you are, but I like them all.
ReplyDeleteCrazed 8 is fabulous! Congrats on your win!
ReplyDeleteFirst, we are the same age. Second, I find all of this fabric to be dreadful, color wise and pattern wise. Cut into small enough pieces they might work nicely to make fruit salad. xo, T
ReplyDeleteTerry -- something tells me you never made traditional quilts with prints from the quilt shoppe, and that you don't have rooms full of stuff that you bought and haven't used yet! which of us is the lucky one???
ReplyDeleteI am with Terry on this topic, though some of the colors are not bad, the patterns are really awful, at the same time after you cut them up into really small pieces and sew them back together , you will probably get in to a show and have to pack them up and start looking for the right packing boxes and rods etc. .......Such a problem. Have fun Kathy. It is only fabric.
ReplyDeleteI think these fabrics might be okay for the BACK of a quilt. Thats what I do with fabric I bought in some kind of mistaken frenzy and realized later....oops. Modern quilters probably wouldn't like this idea because they like to "fancy up" the backs of their quilts, even though nobody sees them. This is something you may have noticed too. By the way, I am your age, roughly.
ReplyDeleteI, too, am roughly your age, and while none of these are fabric I would choose for dress goods (except the yellow/orange cogwheels, which make me smile, and I wear lots of orange) the combinations possible in patchwork seem quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteMary Anne in Kentucky
You've got us wondering what you'll come up with, using these fabrics, and playing in someone else's sandbox!
ReplyDeleteI worked in a quilt shop for 12 years. The owner of the shop thought the patterns, fabric trends cycled about every 7 or 8 years.After working there that long I tended to agree with her.I have a couple of the fabrics pictured. One recent one not.The "modern" fabrics look similar to 1950's era fabrics.Mid Century modern seems to be popular now.
ReplyDeleteI can do orange, but grey gives me the hives. I'll have to try something else in the palette you listed.
ReplyDeleteYou can always overdye the fabrics. Amongst my quilting friends, the answer is "dump it in a bucket of black"! Seriously, some commercial fabrics look much better when they have been overdyed with darker colours.
ReplyDeleteKathy, I do have a collection of materials I purchased when I began to work with fabric and I shake my head over some of the choices. However, the assortment you have presented puts my teeth on edge. People in commerce know that "color sells". I predict this will be a short lived palette.
ReplyDeleteI guess I would have to ask what is the quilt FOR? If you want to make your work commercially appealing to a specific age group to get them to take a class from you, then use prints and colors that are popular right now and whatever is projected to be trendy for 2012. I'd use only commercial fabric as people want to buy what they see.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Terry that grey and orange are short-lived.
I find that this idea of "in" and "out" colors is rather old-fashioned in itself. I also find the modernist quilts very stark in their lack of texture--being a texture fan, of course. But it's all subjective, ater all...Julierose
ReplyDeleteWell, let's just say I'm curious to see what you do with these.
ReplyDelete