Design Elements

 I was invited to be a featured speaker at a guild in the north. I drove to Lynden to a community hall with most of my quilts to talk about design elements. Shirley took a bunch of pictures, to my surprise, and sent them to me. Otherwise, I would have forgotten about the whole thing.

I love this picture. I'm trying to explain the ombre effect from top to bottom.

These are the four trees I made in Lorraine Torrance's class years ago. Using the color wheel, I can explain the difference between warm and cool colors, complementary and monochromatic combinations, , and harmony.

Warm and Cool colors in the same composition.

Two different album quilts. One with a dark background and one with a light. Feel the difference?

The same quilt in different colors. Cathy's Millefiori is on the left and mine is on the right. It is not yet finished, so the women are having a hard time holding it up. The papers are still in the edge pieces. There isn't a stitch of yellow, orange, or red in my quilt. Warm and Cool in one shot.

My spring quilt by Scott Hansen and a block of the fall version.

Simply Delicious proves you can use many different colors and still have a cohesive quilt.

An example of triadic color.

Polychromatic incorporates all colors.

Silk pyramids uses only a small section of the color wheel. It's a very harmonic usage of neighbors yellow, orange, red, and magenta.

Cactus rose is a Judy Niemeyer pattern that I used to play with purple and green. I included a bit of navy blue for fun. It's about half pieced--half appliqued. 

The minute Alison Glass posted this pattern, Tessellation, I was making it. Those secondary designs just pop for me. Very polychromatic.

Hillside Houses is a perfect quilt for talking about color.