Turquoise - a Colour Harmony Sampler

You may recall way back in September, that in my never-ending pursuit of learning all I can about quilting and fabric, I signed up for a year long class in Colour.

My colour?  I wanted to do brown.  Then I learned it wasn't a colour, it's a shade of a colour.

So I spent some time wandering around the shop trying to find something that I would be able to work with for an entire year without my getting tired of it.

I chose Turquoise! 

As you can see, we had to pick several different fabrics in our chosen colour, with different values and shades and textures.  They would be necessary to complete our blocks over the year.

Our next step was to choose a block...there were stars in my eyes when I chose my first block.  It was so pretty.

I loved it.

Then I realized that I would need to make this block over and over and over again over the coming months.  It took a seriously long time to make one block.  All those tiny half square triangles.  When I thought ahead I felt faint.

So I did what any rational person would do, I changed my block to something a little easier to managed.  It's called Arizona Quilt Block.  Found it online.

So here is my first month's block, where we learned about monochromatic (using only turquoise).

I used the lightest shade in the background, some medium and dark values and also a toned fabric (grey added) in the rectangles around the inner square.  I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Next month's class was two blocks.  We learned about analogous colours, the colours that sit beside each other on the colour wheel.  As the colours beside Turquoise were so close, almost imperceptible...I went one more colour card over.

Here is my first block using turquoise, and in the one direction, some cerulian blue and in the other direction some blue/green and an aqua green.

Our third block was also analogous but with a dash of colour from the opposite side of the colour wheel.  So this block has turquoise, and cerulian blue and blue (notice how the "blue" looks a bit purple?  who knew!) in one direction and blue/green and aqua green the other way.  I decided orange was the opposite colour on the wheel (it's so hard when you are in those colours that aren't a primary colour).

Our third lesson and block four is all about complementary colour harmony.  The orange seemed a little off so I decided that my complementary colour was actually yellow orange.  While analogous colours give a calm and peaceful feeling, complementary colours tend to crash and bang into each other.

Next up, with block five, is split complementary colour harmony.  Basically, you take your main colour...again turquoise, and then you take a colour from each side of your complementary colour.  As yellow orange is now my complementary colour, the colours on either side of it are orange yellow and orange.

Do you know what I discovered about oranges?  They hold the browns I so love and adore!!!!  Browns and brick reds.  YAY!!!

So here is my block five with oranges and orange yellow.  One thing about this block, other then it's my favourite by far, is that I tend to like to use the darker values...so in the future blocks I'll have to try and change that up a bit, after all, it's all about stretching our boundaries and learning!

So there we are, it's going to be an interesting quilt when it's done but I'll always know it was my learning to love colour quilt and hopefully I'll remember all the lessons that went into it and the reasons why LOL.  Maybe I better write them down on the label so I can keep track!

We've already had our January class and I only need to do up my block.  It's spaced colour harmony.  I'll explain that next time when I have my finished block to show you.

Keep trying, keep learning and most of all, keep enjoying,
take care,
Vivian