I love word searches – you know, the game where you circle the words you can find from the list provided, only now instead of circling the words, an app highlights them in colors as you find and mark them.
I remember each of us kids getting to pick out one activity book apiece to take on our annual family vacation. Word searches were often my choice as, after we’d climbed on the rocks and Mom had coordinated our picnic lunch (usually a choice of PB&J or bologna and cheese), we waited – and waited – for my dad to fish. He would gladly help us fish in ponds, but the fly fishing in brooks, streams, rivers, that was all him. The settings were beautiful, but oh, it got boring! That’s when the word search book would come out, or maybe one of the several fiction books I had brought to read – truly my favorite activity.
A few weeks ago, I found a great word search app. It’s a guilty pleasure I indulge in way too often. “Seeing” the words can be simple or complicated, fun or frustrating, obvious or tricky. Sometimes I think a word is right there, but then realize that it has all the right consonants, however the vowels are missing, or the letters are mixed up, and my brain has filled in or unscrambled to miraculously create the whole word.
“Seeing” color can also be simple or complicated, fun or frustrating, obvious or tricky. Seeing color is a huge part of choosing fabrics. Maybe you have a deep blue and a violet next to each other, and when you look from a few feet away your eye is telling you that you have used blue-violet – your brain has mixed the two colors together, just like when filling in letters when doing a word search or guessing what a license plate says.
I start a word search by quickly glancing over the screen to see if any words just pop out at me, then looking for the longest words, and then searching for words with letters that are more obvious and easier to see, such as W, M, C, B. It’s the short words that are left that are the hardest to find.
Starting with the main fabrics or with an inspiration fabric makes sense. You then have an anchor, something to hang all the rest of your fabric choices on. Have you really looked at your main fabrics? What colors are they? What are their background colors? Are they all the same value or the same intensity? Are they all cool colors or all warm colors? Do they all have the same “look” or is there some variety?
You can have a group of fabrics that have all the main colors you want to use, and it just falls flat. It needs the colors that bridge one to another and the fabrics that connect the others together.
Imagine what that last sentence would sound like if the short words were taken away that bridge the others together: needs colors bridge another fabrics connect others together. You can sort of figure out the gist of the sentence, but it is so much less work for the reader if all the small words are included – there is no guesswork to understand the sentence’s meaning.
It’s much the same with fabric. The viewer needs you to add in “the space between” so that they can see what you can see. It might be finding lighter value fabrics that help the darker ones pop out and make the pattern emerge, complementary colors to add some pizazz, or fabrics that connect and validate the colors in the quilt.
Seeing color is the key. You are then prepared to use color relationships to your advantage to help convey a pattern or a theme or a particular feeling. Colors in a quilt relate to those in close proximity – their neighbors – and even to those several blocks away – their community. Sometimes we want everyone to get along and sometimes we want to encourage discussion and maybe even conflict. Both can happen once you can see color and know the basics of color relationships and how they interact.
Find the right word? The game app highlights the correct, completed word and adds a bit of color into my day. It’s a nice way to get a little colorful affirmation.
Find the right fabrics? The colors work together? You love it? Happy dance!
How many times have you wished that you were “better at color”?
Some helpful resources from elsewhere in the Dynamic Quilting website:
Three things to consider when choosing an inspiration fabric
How to make your quilt your own
The Dynamic Quilting Color and Fabric Plan - Check out my tool for quilters to use as they choose fabrics. Starting with an inspiration fabric, it helps you analyze that inspiration fabric and in choosing the rest of your fabrics.
Join my email list (below) to hear more about colorand fabric. As a gift, you will receive my free wall hanging pattern that works well for trying out a color palette or showcasing a particular fabric. Practice your color and fabric knowledge with this pattern!