The Quilter's Field Guide to Colour part 3

Since today was a rainy day and it was Saturday, I played with more colour and continued making more bear paw blocks representing the rest of the seasons.  I did the spring blocks yesterday in this blog post.  It was a lot of fun rooting through my scraps (and a few special fabrics from my stash) and finding the right colours and moods for the swatches I chose to represent the various seasons.  Here are the results of today's fun.

(Click on the photos to enlarge.)

First half of the colours I picked for the four seasons

Second half of the colours for the seasons

Winter bear paw block

Fall bear paw block...I couldn't decide which colour to use for the paws so I did two.

Here are the summer blocks.  I made a mistake and cut too many paws so I cut more background and focus fabric since you can't have too much summer, right? ☺

Here are all my blocks so far.

The Quilter's Field Guide to Colour 2

This month's colour lesson from Rachel Hauser's book was linked to the colours of the seasons.  Take a look here for the first post on these exercises.  We had to take 8 different colour ways (one was neutrals) and choose a swatch from each colour to represent the four seasons.  And, then take the choices from the current season to make one or more bear paw blocks.  This is definitely more difficult that it looks at first glance!  First of all, there are all the decisions on sorting the colours into the proper groups.  Is this particular swatch purple, pink, red or orange?  Or maybe neutral?  I finally sorted all the colours into warm and cool groups first. I even got my colour wheel out to help me sort them out!  It was amazing matching up some fabrics to the spring row and finding the perfect ones!  These scraps were left over from a quilt I made for my granddaughter Emma called, Fancy Forest.   I ended up making four spring blocks using the same center focus fabric but different paws.

(click on the photos to enlarge)

First four colours

Second set of four colours

My rows of colours minus the ones used in this exercise

This focus fabric fit well with the green and pink and "sand" that I chose for my neutral

Loved how this fabric went so well with the spring fabrics (except the purple ☺

My four bear paw blocks.  Amazing how different that center fabric looks with the different coloured paws.

the blocks with last month's blocks

If I have a bit of free time before next month's exercise, I may try more blocks from the other seasons.

The Quilter's Field Guide to Colour

I recently bought "The Quilter's Field Guide to Colour", written by Rachel Hauser.  This is a very interesting book with colour swatches that you can cut apart and use to work on the colour exercises in the book.  She has a blog (click here).  She has started blogging some posts to work along with the book and try out making blocks using the colour exercises.  Blocks can be posted on Instagram, but since I don't have an Instagram account and can't open one on my desk top, and only have a cell phone for emergencies, I thought I'd blog my experiences in going through the book.  I'd highly recommend the book if you'd like to learn more about colour theory and how to choose colours with more confidence and explore different options. 

The first exercise involved choosing a warm and cool purple and a warm and cool green.  My choices were #74 Plum and #80 Iris in the purple and #125 Grass and #118 Clover for the green.

my choices for the first exercise

my choices at the top and Rachel's choices underneath

the first two blocks

I'm looking forward to the next exercise.  By the time we're finished, I might have enough bear paw blocks to make a quilt!