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Lighting, Shading and Color Placement


I shared in past posts how I picked my color palettes for each quilt. I get asked about that often, and it’s fun to share my inspiration boards.

Color placement is another part of color that I don't talk about much. Why do I put the colors where I do within each quilt?

It’s all about lighting! I use a lot of inspiration pics from nature to solidify my color choices, but I also try to mimic the way sunlight plays into these natural landscapes to capture some of their essence.

The way sunlight streams through the trees creates a bright spot in the leafy canopy…. This was the inspiration for using an ombre fabric as my background in my latest pattern, Fall Foliage.

I figured if I could create a light spot in the background, as the leaves tumbled down, I could capture that warm fall afternoon sunlight vibe.


Here you see my lighting inspiration pics for my Entangled Sky pattern. I used these same pics as my color inspiration, but it's the way light is used that makes the three-dimensional structure pop.

Imagine the light source coming from one direction, as in a sunset, making it easier to narrow down color placement to get a dynamic effect.

When picking fabrics, this idea helped me pick a definite light, medium, and dark shade in each color. Once I had built the blocks, it was the inspiration pics that helped me decide how to layer the colors. I was going for a latticework of clouds over a fading blue sky kind of look.


Happy Sunday everyone,



Krista



Follow all my quilty adventures on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Visit my YouTube channel for free tutorials and tips. If you like my patterns, you can buy them on Etsy, and here on the website.



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