Dreaming in Color - Pushing a Color with Jean Wells

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"Pushing Color" with Jean Wells

This may sound odd to you, but using this technique when you are putting a palette together creates more depth in the color choices for a quilt. Visiting the Gee’s Bend Quilter’s exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in San Francisco made me realize that using more than one fabric in a color group kept me viewing the piece longer. As we all know, if the Gee's Bend quilters ran out of a red, for instance, they looked for another one, but they did not necessarily match. Going to the fabric store to find the perfect fabric was not an option. That year I made "Steppin’ Out," and followed that plan with the reds and blues in this log cabin design. Then when it came to "City Scape" I did the same thing. My Intuitive Color and Design book goes into more detail on color choices.

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Valori Wells, my daughter who has been designing fabric for the past 21 years, motivated me to try her new “Morning Chatter" New York Beauty quilt pattern. I have always wanted to make a blue and white quilt. As you can see the blues range from a very deep navy to indigo, to mid range blues, and aqua. The prints add variety in texture as well as content. I am really happy with the mood of the colors in the quilt.

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When adapting a pattern design to my own palette I always begin with my “detective hat” on and look where the value changes are. That is what I did with “Morning Chatter,” as you can see when looking at Val’s quilt using her new line of fabric, “Murmur." The light value backgrounds in her quilt use two different prints, where mine is just the light bird print. I felt the darker values scattered along the edges drew you in, so I copied the format she had in my two color quilt.

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Valori also designed a fast and simple round project bag pattern for her new Murmur fabric line. I love it. Just the thing, if you need a little project to make for fun, I am making one for each of the girls in my mini group for Christmas.

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If you love the original Morning Chatter, we have it available in a kit. The kit includes everything you need to make the quilt top. 

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Happy sewing!

-Jean