Dreaming in Color - Trusting Your Intuition with Jean Wells
I feel like I am “Dreaming in Color” with summer finally here, and my garden and pots all planted. I just love this time of year. Last February, on a ten day trip to Maui, John and I ended up with six days of torrential rain. It was warm and beautiful, but really wet. Thank goodness I put together a bag of linen squares, scrap fabric, and cotton pearl floss. So I was a happy camper cutting out simple stone shapes with my small embroidery scissors and stitching to my heart's content.
The challenge for me was to work with what I had and to design more randomly. I found myself referring to the color vocabulary words (February blog) during the process. I would ask myself “does this one need something darker, brighter, lighter, etc". The words came to me automatically. Sometimes we do not give ourselves enough credit in “trusting our intuition”. And all I had to work with was what was in the bag so I had to find solutions there.
I created small pieces of art from those vacation stones and had them framed, which brought on more color decisions when it comes to the fabric mat and frame. I will share images and comments with you below. They are all going into Valori’s and my gallery show at the store in July. (I always get nervous that nobody will want to purchase them.)
“Vacations Stones” is the name of the series.
Day I - blues and greys were easy, but the bit of magenta and gold added some spice. The deeper blue mat made the stones pop and the warmth of the reddish brown frame I felt it drew you back in.
Day II - This was the hardest group to put together as I had that one peach block so I pulled the green stone with a bit of orange for the other block. Once I felt the three blocks could work together then I choose thread for stitching to unit them. What to do about the mat color? I finally settled on the deep violet as you can see in the bottom block.
Day III – These are my favorites to work with and very soothing. Texture became really important and fun. Adding all of the texture was fun. I auditioned several colored fabric for the mat and they just did not play well with the elegance of the blocks so I went with a cream colored linen and framed it in soft olive.
Day IV - This is one of my favorite combinations with the indigo and teal. I was not sure about combining them but I like it. I had to put a bit of orange in as it is opposite on the color wheel from the blues. And I love the deep turquoise linen and indigo frame.
Day V – This combination was another challenge for me and I was starting to run out of fabric. I had a tiny little scrap of a hand dye fabric that you see in the bottom right hand block and once I picked some friends to go with it then I was off and running. The gold block silk with the gold stitching was a left over piece from a quilt I made several years ago. I was so happy it found a home. For the mat I went with a warm avocado green and a green frame.
Day VI – I set aside the yellow green fabrics right when I started creating the stone and the little pile of fabric grew with the addition of the blacks and prints. This piece feels very playful to me. I searched through my linen pile of fabric and found this print design. It felt really good along with the black frame.
