In a few short weeks I will participate on a panel with Joen Wolfrom and Christine Barnes on C&T’s Creative Spark learning platform. This morning while getting ready to do some other work I happened upon an article titled: Why is the World Losing Color: the Rise of Chromophobia. This is good stuff quilters. Good. Stuff.
According to The Culturist this trend towards neutrals has happened gradually since the 1800’s. What an incredible dynamic. We see more color and have colorful names for said colors, yet we are afraid to use them in our work. The world is trending towards a minimalist approach to color and design.
My logo runs counter to the color trends. It’s all about the color. I asked the designer to take the color palate from Shine Your Light, using the candle and this is what she came up with. I love this so, so much. In part because it captures something of the essence color play and the fact that color plays with us. And it pursues the reckless abandon with which I quilt.
As quilt makers we tend towards using color value – the relative lightness/darkness of a hue next to something else to highlight or downplay a design element in the quilt. This is where using a camera to look at an image in black & white can help us. However color makes everything more. We can use any color, anywhere, any time for our designs and yes, we can ADD color to our quilts with decorative machine stitching. In my world these things go together. Design and color and decorative stitching (quilting) all work together to create a unique quilt that both shows us who we are now, and offers us new and never before seen places to grow, have fun, express our sorrows and our joys.
I can sometimes do all of this on the blank page, and I do love doing this. What I love too and would love to see more of is quilt makers exploring the wide world of color with reckless abandon. This is in party why, in the section on color in Color, Thread & Free-Motion Quilting I write poetically about color, it is meant to inspire us and spur us onto greater beauty.
Come join me in the pursuit of using color with reckless abandon,
Teri
