Swoon Color Wheel

Many of you may be aware of a new 24" quilt block named Swoon by Camille Roskelley. Her business name is Thimble Blossoms and she has a fabric line from Moda Fabrics called Vintage Modern-both the fabric line and the Swoon pattern is very popular locally at the quilt store I work at and my local quilt group. I discovered Camille's blog and she had made a scrappy Swoon bvlock which gave me the idea to use the color wheel colors in a scrappy Swoon because if sounded fun and I have some color theory teaching and thought it would be a good visual tool. It is an easy block-squares, flying geese and half square triangles (no Thangles just a line drawn diagonally through squares, sew and cut apart.) I did a minimal of stitch-in-the-ditch quilting and some radiating lines in the dark background. It killed me but no embellishments were added to keep it simple. Fun  and easy!!

So then I decided to make the same quilt block using "tints" of each color. I used the same color placement just tinted the color. I learned that I rarely use peach (light orange) because there was little of it in my stash. I used grey in the background since black with white added is gray. I quilted the piece with all curved and round lines. Not a grey fan but it is a teaching tool.

After the tint block I made a "shade" block in which all the colors have black added to them to darker them. I found out I had no burgandy in my stash and had to purchase some for this quilt. I think it represents a primitive/country/old fashioned look in quilts which is not my thing. But the finished quilt is nice even though one wouldn't use all dark colors in a quilt because there would be no contrast and the design lines and motifs would not show up much. I quilted this quilt in a combination of curved and straight lines and prefer oodles of quilting and like this quilt the best because of it. I hope it is useful to me when I teach color theory. I love embellishments and my rhinestone supply is calling me out "glue me on to those new quilts!!"

These three quilts showed me my strong and weak colors in my stash. Am I going to run out and buy a bunch of peach and burgandy?-no but it is fun to see where one unconsciousely buys favorite colors and discards others.

Yes these quilts are not artsy but functional. Sometimes that's okay. I am starting a crazy zentangled inspired art quilt at the moment and having so much fun using black and white fabrics from a block exchange from my quilt group.