Pulling fabrics….

I have a baby quilt that needs to be made in the next few weeks and the first step was to pull fabrics for it. Now, this process can either be my favorite part OR my LEAST favorite part of the creation!!

In this case, the colors were not ones that I would normally work with. They are muted peach colors and really stretched my fabric collection to find ones that would fit the color palette.

Earlier in the day, I had attended a virtual lecture by art quilter, Melinda Bula, and the subject of her talk was COLOR!!!

It was not the usual color talk where the speaker went on and on about analagous, complementary, and triadic colorways. Instead, she focused on the feelings that color evoke and encouraged us to go with those feelings when we are selecting fabrics….to TRUST OUR INSTINCTS!!!

She shared this advertisement from Mercedes Benz…..

It is supposed to be saying that a Mercedes will appeal to ANYbody, but what I really love are the descriptions of our brains….

LEFT BRAIN.. I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathemetician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistsic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

RIGHT BRAIN…. I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

The point of this discussion was that we choose color palettes because of our brain, and she encouraged all of us left brain people to find a right brain creative friend to help stretch us. AND, all of us right brain people to find a left brain person to help rein us in a bit!!

But now I have gotten off subject!!

One of the best things that I learned from her was to always audition fabric on a white background, because the colors will interact with the colors that they are touching….even my purple cutting mat!! She encouraged us to get rid of as many peripherial colors as we can because seeing even a small amount of red out of the corner of your eye will change the way the colors look to you. Interesting!!!

I decided to put this idea into practice with my current fabric pull. I pulled one set of fabrics and looked at them on a white background and on my cutting mat……

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Part of these differences are because of lighting but you can still see that the fabrics on the mat look paler and more washed out because they are set against the dark purple.

After I pulled these fabrics, I decided to add a bit of green to them. It was fun to look thru my stacks of green, all the while intoning “green with a leaning to peach”, and I was amazed at the fabrics that fit that description!!!

The final pull looks like this….

I am starting to get excited to work on this sweet project!!!