JWD Publishing Blog

When selecting colors for your designs  (quilts, fiberart, paintings, interior designs, etc.), consider using a few deep, dark shades in your mixture. You won’t be disappointed. These colors give great return for your effort. In fact, they can be the key to making a stunning design. In essence, dark shades can add a visual punch that greatly enhances a design.  Today’s post  explains how splashes of dark shades can enhance designs. 

If you have missed the recent posts discussing shades, consider reading at least the first post that discusses what shades are and how they can be difficult to find in certain mediums. It might be advantageous for you to read the subsequent posts about shades too.

Clarifying the Difference Between A Shade and a Dark Tone

Shades are colors that are made by adding black to a pure color. Some shades are slightly darker than the pure color. Today I’m focusing on shades that have had enough black added to them that they are dark or deeply colored. Because these dark hues are a combination of only one pure color and black, they are quite rich and very clear.

As discussed in an earlier post, shades in fabric are rare. Most dark-colored fabrics are dark tones rather than shades. Tones have a graying quality to them; some are slightly grayed while others have so much grayness to them that they are lackluster. 

Pat Holly’s traditional quilt Circle ‘Round the Stars gives us an excellent opportunity to see examples of both shades and tones.

Continue reading the rest of the post »

It does seem a bit out of season to be talking about fall colors in the middle of cold temperatures and a snowy winter, but I guess that’s life this February. Today we’re focusing on warm shades—and without a doubt, these are the colors of fall. In this post, I hope you will enjoy seeing the subtle nuances created simply with black added to a warm pure color.

Last week we featured the warmest shades of all, yellow, golden-yellow, and chartreuse. If you did not get a chance to look at this post, do hop over there to see these pure colors’ amazing transformations when black is added.  Today we’ll look at the remaining warm pure colors and their luscious autumnal shades. Many of  these hues are very popular in quilts, paintings, jewelry, and interior design.

In next week’s post, you will see a selection of quilts that include warm shades. These quilts may give you some ideas as to how you may want to use shades to make your designs visually compelling.

Spring-green Shade Scale

 Pure spring green is the coolest of the warm autumnal greens. Many of these dark shades are the hues seen in evergreen forests.

Yellow-green Shade Scale

 Yellow-green’s shades are prevalent in fall and are the hues of many leaves and vegetation. These are very popular warm greens.  They are quite prevalent in fabric.

Continue reading the rest of the post »

Two thoughts before beginning this post’s color feature:

First, JWD Publishing changed servers last week due to the amount of space I am using on this blog (much too much I have been told). We  ran into difficulties during the transfer process, so I have been unable to access our blog until now. Patience has been the word of the week for me. I thank you for your patience.

Secondly, thanks to all of you who left comments in a variety of places about which patterns you like on the quilt rotation located on our JWD homepage. Thank you for taking the time to let us know what you think about the homepage, the quilts, and what brings a smile to your face. We want to send complimentary patterns to Barbara Bryan, Frances Hague, Peggy Hatch, Sarah Stevens,  Laura McGrath, and Evelyn O’brien. If you are one of these people, please email me your address.

 WARM SHADE TRANSFORMATION

In this post I’d like to focus on the shades from the warmest of all pure colors: yellow, golden-yellow, and chartreuse. If you have not had a chance to read the initial post about shades or the following post about cool shades, you might want to visit these posts before reading this post.

Whereas cool shades become darker versions of their own pure colors, the majority of warm shades differ greatly from their original pure color. Most warm pure colors make surprising changes when black is added. Because these shades differ greatly from their parent color, their names rarely include their pure-color parent. Therefore, eye recognition is an important factor when working with warm shades (using the color tool can be a handy substitute for eye recogniation). It’s helpful to know a shade’s color origin when the shade is featured in a work of art or a room setting, This knowledge allows you to make the best additional color selections for your project. That’s a huge benefit.

This post features the shades of the three warmest pure colors—golden-yellow, yellow, and chartreuse (yellow is the warmest of all). These three colors can be seen in the color wheel illustration below.

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 Greetings Everyone!

First, before thinking about color, if  you are a quilter, I want to share something that excited me this week—-besides snow! A few days ago I clicked onto our JWD homepage  and found a SURPRISE awaiting me—–something I have been wanting for a very long time.  To celebrate my happy-day feeling that’s lasted all week long, JWD is giving  patterns to 5 happy quilters. If your’re interested, go to our homepage to see what I am so excited about—and see why I picked 5 happy quilters. Then let me know what you think of our new feature ……….and if you want one of those patterns, which one? I’ll announce the pattern recipients in the next post.   (By the way, if you are a quilter and want to receive all of JWD’s blogs, do become a fan.) 

Also, one more thing—-I’d love to hear what has made you really happy this week—-big or small.  Thanks for letting me share with you.  Happy smiles to you! 

Now on to color! 

Celebrating Shades

We have been talking about cool color shades these past two weeks. Now it’s time to explore a selection of these shades on your own.  Select  2-3 pure-colors that you really like—pure colors that fall within the cooler section of the color wheel.  So, any color from green to blue to magenta will work. Consider selecting pure colors that do not lie too close to each other on the wheel. For instance, you might choose a green such as aqua green, a blue like cerulean blue, and purple. By spreading out your choices, you’ll see how the shades differ throughout the wheel.

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Greetings!

I hope you have had fun searching shades in your stash and at your favorite fabric store this past week. If you did this little exercise, you have probably come to the realization that shades are sparse in your collection.  If you missed this earlier post about shades, do visit this first shade-scale post. I suggest you head for it either before or after you read this post, preferably beforehand.

As mentioned in the earlier post, all shades belong to the shade scale—a group of colors that are made in the same way: by mixing black with a pure color. In this post I show a range of shades made from a selection of pure colors that mostly lie on the cooler side of the color wheel.  Also I used a simple traditional quilt block design to illustrate a few concepts when using shades as your artwork’s featured color scale.

Let the Color Wheel Guide You

The placement of pure colors around the color wheel is an important factor when thinking about using shades. Here are some hints:

1. The pure colors along the top of the wheel are the lightest colors. These pure colors have more shades in their families than any other colors do.
2. The pure colors along the bottom of the wheel are the darkest colors. These pure colors have less shades in their families than any other pure colors.
3. Colors that lie in the middle section on either side of the color wheel, such as red and aqua green, are middle-of-the-road in their lightness and darkness. They have about the same number of shades as they do tints (whitened colors).
4. A pure color’s placement on the color wheel gives you hints on how you can use your colors most effectively.
5. Most warmer, lighter shades will provide more brilliance and vibrancy than those shades that are cooler and darker.
6. Cool, darker shades create richness and deep shadows. They also help to ground the design.

A Sampling of Shade Scales

In each of these samples (below), the pure color, a range of shades, and black (or black with a touch of the pure color) has been included. When working with a design featuring shades, do consider using the pure color to give a little extra spunk of brilliance or vibrancy.

Extra note:  If you are working with a really dark pure color, such as violet, blue-violet, or red-violet, consider adding a few of the pure color’s darker tints too. This will give you a wider value range. You will see why this would be advisable when you see the darkness of the violet shades in my little designs at the end of this post.

 GREEN

As these shades darken, they are usually called dark green. Pure green and the lightest of its shades can appear luminous next to the darker shades because green is relatively warm fairly middle-valued. 

Continue reading the rest of the post »

I am writing this extra Playing with Color post because today I went to one of my favorite blogs,  See How We Sew,  and was delighted to see a post by Laura Nownes on how to select fabrics for a quilt by using the 3-in-1-Color Tool.   Wow!—-Laura’s explanation was so clear, concise, and easy to follow. Since I have not yet discussed this tool on the Playing with Color blog, I thought you might like to read Laura’s post  Choosing Fabircs and Colors—It’s as Easy as 1-2-3,  

Win a Color Tool

C & T has given Laura a color tool to give away. If this interests you, hop right on over to her post to see how to win this tool.

A Few Other Tidbits about the Color Tool

Personally, I love using the color  tool, as it’s so easy and quick to use (I hope you don’t mind me saying this). Besides artwork, I use it for home decor, gardening, and other unexpected activities.

The color tool is 11 years old this year. There are 3 editions out in the world today (we’ve tried to improve on each one). No matter the edition, they all do the same basic color tasks. The one shown here (white background) is from the 2nd edition.

The 3rd edition has a cover with large colorful circles on a black background. This tool includes CMYK, RGB, and HEX  formulas to match the color swatches. Therefore, you can key into your illustrator program the formulas for the swatches you want to use for your quilt, fabric art, or other artwork. This newest edition has a few other changes too. For instance, I re-worked the swatch ratios to eliminate all fractional percentages. Consequently, the swatches are slightly different from the earlier versions, as the ratios used are slightly different.

If you are interested in purchasing this tool, mostl quilt/fabric stores carry it. Also you can purchase the 3-in-1 Color Tool at the C & T Publishing website or from many other Internet sites.

If you are a quilter or sewer ——–

Do venture over to the blog See How We Sew.  I think it is the best quilting/sewing blog on the Internet. It’s both well organized and well-written AND it has a wealth of projects, activities, and ideas to be shared. It is a bi-weekly blog written by four quilters and sewers: Laura Nownes, Darra Williamson,  Jennifer Rounds, and Christie Batterman. They each have their own flair, interests, and specialties. If you subscribe, the post will come into your mailbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.

I’ll be posting later in the week when we continue our discussion about shades.

——Joen