palettes for Petal and Stem
Hello, hello! Welcome to a fresh new week full of possibility.
Today I’m popping in to share some color palette ideas for a brand new sew-along being hosted by Amy Friend of During Quiet Time for her book, Petal and Stem. The book is a collection of plant-inspired paper pieced blocks, designed to be mixed and matched in a flexible, modern style.
If you love to garden and you like to foundation paper piece, the Whimsy Garden sew-along will be your cup of tea!
This is the Garden Whimsy quilt, one of several quilt patterns included in the book, Petal + Stem. But keep in mind, this is just one way to make the quilt! The quilt pattern makes space for a variety of 6” square and 6” x 12” blocks, for which you can use any of the many options provided in the book.
The sew-along is just kicking off now, with two weeks for planning fabrics and acquiring a copy of the book. I am honored that Amy asked me to share some palette ideas today for those in the planning stage. Let’s do that!
Amy’s quilt, shown above, combines a low volume background with predominantly pink, yellow and purple flowers. Where else could we take this?
Using the Color Wheel
Of course, I’ve been hosting something of my own, based on my book The Quilter’s Field Guide to Color. It’s called Quilter’s Color Quest and is designed to help you digest the content in the book so that you can really put it to use. The book is all about mastering color and fabric choices for quilters, with a hands-on approach using a big bunch of color swatches included with the book.
My last post for our Quilter’s Color Quest focused on using the Color Wheel to discover analogous and complementary color schemes. We can put that concept to use here, with the Garden Whimsy quilt. Any version of this quilt is likely to include green for the leaves and stems. Thus, green is our anchor color. From there, we can create two analogous color schemes by adding colors near to green on the color wheel for the flowers.
Green + Warm Colors
If we add green’s warm neighbors, yellow and orange, we create a warm garden color palette that’s fresh and invigorating.
Here I’ve used a low volume texture called Uncorked for the background fabric and a range of green solids to express the many lovely shades of green. From left the greens are: Kona Chartreuse, Kona Grass Green, FreeSpirit Garden, Kona Leprechaun.
All the white/orange/yellow fabrics for my garden flowers are from the Zen Chic Spotted collection.
Green + Cool Colors
The opposite analogous color scheme with green as an anchor will have an entirely different feel. This is green combined with its cool neighbors: blue and purple. Such a quilt will have a much softer, more restful quality than the warm version.
Here I’ve used the same background fabric and green fabrics as the first version, but switched out the flower fabrics for blues and purples from the Zen Chic Spotted collection.
Dusky Garden
But wouldn’t it also be fun to try out different background colors? Some gardeners love the end of the day in the garden. You can stretch those last minutes into hours, as dusk falls. Here I’ve imagined a dusky garden with jewel-toned flowers.
Greens for the dusky garden would be more muted. Here are three possibilities: Kona Grass Green, Kona Olive and Kona Avocado. My background fabric choice is Add it Up in Shibori. And for the flowers I have sourced subtle prints from my stash. The colors are dusty or jewel-toned, to carry through the fading quality of the light as the night draws near.
Sunny Rock Garden
Or how about a much sunnier quilt? Infuse your Whimsy Garden quilt with sunshine yellow as your background fabric! Mix blue-greens into your greeny-greens to hint at succulents in a rock garden. Add bright, bold hues for your desert-inspired blooms.
During the sew-along, Amy is going to be sharing a free paper piecing pattern for this block, shown in yellow and green. Instead of grass for your garden, you could substitute this block, to cultivate more of a succulent feel. Hmm… the space between rows could turn into pebbles with the right fabric!
I’ve selected a simple yellow crosshatch for my sunny background fabric. These green solids are from left Kona Grass Green, Kona Leprechaun, Windham Palette and FreeSpirit Julep. I do love a blue-green! My flower fabrics range from red, to fiery orange and bright pink. It’s a garden that’s sure to attract a butterfly or two!
I hope this sparks some ideas as you begin imagining your garden quilt. Follow along at During Quiet Time where Amy will be joined by other guests like myself during the sew-along to encourage and inspire you.
Happy creating!!
