Quilting in Colour: finding inspiration in images

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

Today is the final instalment of my Quilting in Colour series, where we've been discussing techniques for creating beautiful colour stories in quilts.

For the past few weeks, we've focused pretty closely on the colour wheel. We've talked about some basic colour schemes, including triadic, analogous, and complimentary colours, and how to enhance those basic colour schemes by using value and saturation to add neutral colours and contrast. If you'd like to refresh your memory, you can check out those posts here: week 1, week 2.

Of course, there are plenty of sources other than the colour wheel that you can reference when choosing colours for a quilt. Even just off the top of my head, I can think of lots of photos, artwork, and movies whose colours would translate beautifully into a quilt!

Before we get into that, I wanted to remind you all that, although this series was written with quilting in mind, all the techniques discussed can be applied to any form of visual art, including clothing design, needlework, and the traditional fine arts.

With that out of the way, let's dive in!

Choosing an Image

If I don't already have an idea in mind for the colours I want to use when starting a new quilt, I like to look through photos, artwork, and other visual mediums to find inspiration. You can use almost any image for inspiration, but I do have a few recommendations for those of you who are just starting.

Choose a picture that inspires you. Because everyone has different and unique tastes, not everyone will be inspired by the same pictures. You may come across lots of pictures that are objectively beautiful, but not of particular interest to you.

An inspiring picture is one that makes you feel something very strongly. It could be love at first sight, or something you learn to love by looking at it over and over. Or you may feel a totally different emotion, nostalgia, melancholy, or fear. Regardless of what emotion the image invokes, most people will know when something has inspired them.

Here are a few pictures that inspired me with their colours:

Selecting a picture that you love will help you to maintain motivation, and ensure you genuinely enjoy working on your project! Keeping a copy of your picture on hand while you're working is also a great idea. You can look back at it whenever you need an extra boost of inspiration!

Focus on the colours. Remember that the picture you choose is being used for colour inspiration, not just because you love it. As an example, here's a picture of my dogs:

I really love this picture, but there aren't any particularly inspiring colours in it. Between the dogs and the snow, it's very black and white, a colour combination I definitely could have figured out without looking at this photo.

Here's a different photo, also taken in the snow, but which also includes some blue in the sky and a variety of greys in the foreground where the snow has been disturbed. It makes a much more interesting colour scheme, although there's nothing wrong with black and white.

Curate a folder of inspirational images. A lot of creators collect inspirational pictures in a folder on their computer, or physically in albums. By collecting pictures you love as you stumble across them in your everyday life, you'll have lots of exciting, inspiring pictures available whenever you might need them.

Make sure you keep track of the source of each image so you can let the artist or creator know that they've inspired you. Saving links to the artist's social media or website is also a great idea, that way you can visit them frequently and be inspired by any new content they create!

Take note of what you like about the image. Maybe you've picked a painting of a sunset and you love the texture of the paint and the way the clouds swirl together. Or perhaps you love the low contrast of a photo taken on a foggy day. Maybe it's the dark and sinister feeling of the cover of your favourite mystery novel.

Take note of the things that stand out to you, you might be able to replicate them in your quilt. For example, you could make really interesting and beautiful textures using different quilting designs, you might be able to find fabric with a print that replicates the textures created by a paint brush or clouds, and some effects might be achieved through colour choice alone.

If you were inspired by the texture of a fallen log, something like this Oakwood fabric from Northcott could work really well in your quilt.

Consider the pattern requirements. If you've already selected a pattern for your quilt, take a look at the fabric requirements before selecting your picture. Some quilts will call for lots of different colours, while others may recommend just a few.

The picture of clouds on the left only has a few colours; blue, white, and a several shades of grey, while the picture of the glass fish tank on the right contains a variety of colours. If your pattern calls for only three colours, the picture of clouds would be much easier to use.

Select multiple pictures. When searching through pictures online or in your own albums, it isn't hard to find lots that inspire you. The first picture that really hits you with the desire to create is going to make it difficult to keep looking, but some pictures just don't work well with certain patterns.

If you haven't already chosen a pattern, it can be great to have four or five different colour schemes ready to go when a new pattern enters your life. This way, you're ready to pick out some fabric and start creating right away!

Having a variety of colours to choose from is also great if you enjoy working from your stash. You may find that you're prone to buying a lot of warm fabrics, so that beautiful blue water-scape would be a challenge to create.

And even if you don't end up using the colours from every one of your inspirational pictures, it's great practice to find the colour schemes in those images.

Breaking Down the Colours

Once you've selected a few pictures to work with, you'll need to figure out what colours they're composed of. You will want to take note of the different colours, neutrals, and areas of shadow and light, as well as the amount of each.

Overall, about half the picture is blue, which makes up the background, the other half is a variety of shades of grey, which would be the piecing, plus a little accent of bright green.

Once I've broken down the colours, I find it's really helpful to make swatches. These can be brought to the fabric store and used to find the right coloured fabric for your pattern. Swatches are especially helpful if you're shopping at a variety of different fabric stores.

Here are a few examples of swatches for the Eiffel Tower picture:

This one was made using markers. If drawing your swatches by hand, you may be able to blend different colours to get close to those in the picture. If you need a colour that you can't recreate with the tools on hand, make a note of that colour on your swatch. You can see that I wasn't able to recreate a light enough grey and noted that under the grey samples.

This swatch was made digitally using the eyedropper tool on the Krita program. Krita is a free drawing program similar to Adobe Photoshop, it can be downloaded here if you'd like to try it. One thing to note when using the eyedropper tool is that it takes the exact colour of the pixel you click on, so you may want to try a few different places until you've found a colour that seems truly representative of the picture.

Here's a sample I made using the same picture, but the colours came out a bit different. I personally think that the colours in the first sample are more accurate to the feeling of the original picture, but there's nothing bad about this version.

You can also crop pictures if there's a particular colour that you don't want to include. In the example of my Eiffel tower picture, maybe I would like to remove the green:

After cropping your image and making a new swatch, you may find that you like it better, or you may prefer the original colour scheme. That doesn't mean that you've wasted your time, in fact it's better than you tried because after exploring every different possibility, you can be confident that you've got a colour scheme you love!

Here are a few more examples of colour schemes created from the photos shared earlier in the post:

This first example is pretty simple. The background is made up of tamarack needles and is mostly green, the cones are purple, and there are two different neutrals in the bark; a grey on the main branch, and a beige on the smaller offshoots.

The lighting in the photo is pretty consistent, so there are no areas with extreme shadows or light. If I needed more colours for the pattern I wanted to use, I could incorporate a light purple from the top of the cones and a dark purple from the underside.

Since most of this picture is green, I would use that for my background colour. I personally really like the variety of different greens in the needles, so I might piece my backing using a variety of different shades of green rather than one single green print.

This is another fairly simple colour scheme. It includes a lot of green, some blue for the sky, and white petals with a yellow centre for the daisies. I noticed that the stems of the daisies are a different shade of green than the rest of the foliage and decided to include both shades.

This picture is pretty evenly lit. There is a little bit of shadow underneath the daisies, so I could have included a darker neutral in the colour scheme as well, but I really liked the brightness of the colours without it.

This is another picture which includes a lot of green, because of this, I would probably use green for the background colour. In the picture, blue would be the background because it's the furthest from the camera, but using it for the background of a quilt would completely change the feeling the colours are creating. So I chose to use it as an accent instead.

There are quite a few different colours in this picture. There's the blue of the sky, the red, orange, and gold in the changing leaves, the green of those that haven't started changing, and the dark grey of the tree bark.

The coloured leaves are so far away that we don't get a good idea of light and shadow in them, but the green leaves are much closer and we are able to see there's an approximately equal amount of shadow and light, which is why I've chosen to include two shades of green.

The picture is composed of roughly equal amounts of each colour, so they should all be used equally in the quilt top. Because it is the background in the image, I would use the light, off-white blue colour for the quilt background, and use all the others as accents in the piecing.

Let's finish these examples off with another simple one. This colour scheme is made completely from neutral colours. The sky and snow are the same shade of pale grey, and the willows and grasses are made up of a variety of browns and beiges. Because of the overcast lighting, there are no extreme shadows.

The pale grey takes up the majority of the image, so I would use that as the background, and the various browns and beiges would be used for the piecing. Depending on the number of different fabrics called for in the pattern, you could adjust the number of different values of brown to accommodate.

Using Other Media

As we know, photos aren't the only type of visual media. In fact, because of the variety of colours a photograph picks up, they are one of the more challenging types of image to pull colours from. You can really use any type of picture imaginable to inspire your colour schemes.

Flat Graphics

The simplest types of images would be flat graphics. These use flat colours without shadows to create simple images. Things like flags, logos, signs, and banners are all examples of flat graphics. All of these use a limited combination of colours and simple shapes to be recognizable from a distance.

But, when you apply those same colours to a quilt, especially if the pattern uses totally different shapes than the original source, most people won't be able to tell what the original inspiration for your quilt was unless you tell them.

This example was made using the Mother's Choice quilt block and the colours on a can of Sprite. I've never actually drunk Sprite before, I just thought the colours looked nice together.

Preparatory Artwork

This category is one step down from works of art. It includes things like doodles, concept art, and character sheets. These are really great for beginners to use because they often include colour swatches right in the picture!

A lot of artists share their process art and colours on social media, but you can also look at the archives of animation and film studios, or at preparatory work for historical artwork in gallery archives.

Again, I've made a sample quilt using the Mother's Choice block, this time using the colours of one of my favourite childhood cartoon characters, Bloom from the Rainbow S.p.A. series Winx Club.

I used her skin tone to create a neutral background and her red hair for the centre. The rest of the piecing uses the blue from her outfit and the yellow accent from her crown and brooch. By being selective about colour placement, I was able to reference the shape of her crown in the piecing. If you didn't want people to recognize your colour reference, you could spread out the colours more evenly, and avoid referencing shapes from the original source.

Artwork and Photographs

Artwork, including paintings, illustrations, photographs, and drawings are a little bit more complicated because of the variety of colours they use. As seen in my earlier examples, you may need to find averages of the colours, rather than using every different value and tone.

The amount of different photos and works of art in the world are virtually limitless, and more is being created all the time! To find some of these amazing pictures, check out artist's websites and social media accounts, and art gallery archives.

Moving Pictures

You don't have to limit yourself to the use of still images, feel free to experiment with colours inspired by movies, video games, and other moving pictures. I recommend taking screenshots so you're working with still images, and to use multiple screenshots taken throughout the scene.

Once you have screenshots, use the same process as you would with photos and artwork.

Here's a sample I made using colours from the city of Tiralin from a game called Zanzarah: the hidden portal, developed by Funatics. The buildings are made from a neutral off-white or grimy beige coloured stone, I used these colours in the background, and pieced it from multiple colours to look more like bricks. The burgundy comes from some of the roofs and walls in the city, and there are also a lot of plants, trees, and wooden benches that add some green and brown.

Friends, I've had so much fun looking through my photos and some of my favourite media while writing this post! I hope all of you have enjoyed seeing some of the colours that surround me, and where I get my inspiration for quilts!

If I haven't done a very good job explaining anything, I would be more than happy to review any of my suggestions in another post or one on one. I love talking about colours and composing beautiful colour schemes, so feel free to reach out!

Or, if I've helped you create an exciting new colour scheme, I would love to see it! Feel free to share photos and stories in the comments below or send them to me directly through my contact page! You can also tag my on Instagram @vafibrearts or share your colour experiments in my Facebook group!

Thank you all for joining me in my colour experiments, I'm looking forward to using some of these colour schemes in future projects!

Until next time Friends, Keep Experimenting!

VA