The Quilter’s Color Guide: Mastering the Art of Color Confidence Class Plan

The Quilter’s Color Guide: Mastering the Art of Color Confidence

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Overview

  • A foreword by Amy Barrett-Daffin emphasizing that color confidence is a learned skill and introducing the concept of the book as a masterclass on color and value.

  • Sections on color theory, practical color application, and special effects in quilting.

  • Contributions from various quilting experts, including Joen Wolfrom, Jean Wells, Katie Pasquini Masopust, and others.

  • Exercises to help quilters build their color confidence and enhance their quilt designs.

The content covers a wide range of topics, such as:

  • Building color palettes and understanding color concepts.

  • Creating color recipes and exploring different color schemes.

  • The role of value in color selection and composition.

  • Working with different types of fabrics, including solids, prints, and hand-dyes.

  • Thread selection, working with neutrals, and achieving special effects with color.

Overall, "The Quilter's Color Guide" aims to empower quilters to confidently experiment with color, make informed color choices, and elevate their quilt designs through a deeper understanding of color theory and its practical application in quilting.

Lesson Plan

Value and Color Exercises By Katie Pasquini Masopust and Brett Barker

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WHEELS Creating a color wheel and gray-scale value run tool from fabric is essential for understanding colors and value changes. The way in which color and value relate to each other is at the heart of artistic creation. Hang this tool on your wall. Use it to identify the color and value schemes used in future chapters. A fabric color wheel will help you develop your eye for color faster than any other tool in the marketplace today.

Pull this from the book PDF when done:

  • Exercise: Grayscale Value Run - This arrangement of gray values is one of the most important tools you can possess as an art quilter. It will help you evaluate each color’s value. 

  • Exercise: Graphic Gray-Scale - You’ll add energy and vibration to the grayscale by using fabrics in black-and-white prints in a seven-step value run (Your fabrics need to be true black-and-white prints—no creams, grays, or solids.) black-and-white graphic prints. 

  • Exercise: Color Wheel - A personal color wheel that you create from fabric gives you a much better sense of color theory than a printed color wheel that you simply purchase from an art store. Your color wheel will have 12 medium value colors (sometimes called the true hues). The primary colors will have lighter versions, called pastels or tints, and darker versions, called shades. 

Class Description

Learn how to work with pleasing colors every time. Make a color wheel, a gray scale value run tool and gray scale print run tool to help you in your color journey. Learn how to work with Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colors. Learn Hues, Tints and Shades. 

Suggested Class Size: 10

Suggested Class Length: 2-3 hours

It should take three hours or less to complete based on cutting out the fabrics and making the color wheel and the gray-scale charts. You could make it last longer by doing the color wheel in solids, textured solids and in prints. 

Supply List

  • Rotary cutting ruler, cutting mat, rotary cutter, iron, fusible web, fabrics noted below

  • One 18” square piece of gray-scale fabric

  • Gray-scale solid fabric in seven steps of gray from black to white with 5 steps in between

  • Gray-scale print fabric in seven steps of gray from black to white with 5 steps in between

  • Colored fabrics including: Yellow, light yellow, dark yellow, Yellow-orange, Orange, light orange, dark orange, Red-orange, Red, light red (pink), dark red, Red-violet, Violet, light violet, dark violet, Blue-violet, Blue, light blue, dark blue, Blue-green, Green, light green, dark green Yellow-green.

Classroom Preparation

Suggest that the solid colored fabrics are in the room and that you use one of C&T Publishings color tools to select the colors so that your wheels are as close to color correct as possible for this exercise. This will also create an add on sale. Link to C&T Color Tools.

Class Agenda 

Value is the most important aspect of color. A full range of values, from light to dark, makes the difference between a mediocre quilt and a true piece of art. Usually the very lights and the deepest darks are forgotten. Because lighter colors can illuminate a quilt and darks can add depth and richness, we encourage the use of a seven-step value run in art pieces. 

Provide the agenda for the class (and each class/course, if necessary). This should include which steps to follow in the book, in which order, and should directly reference the page numbers in the book. 

  1. Gather Your Supplies 

    • Rotary cutter

    • Fusible backed fabrics

    • Background fabric to adhere fabrics

  1. Make Your Gray-Scale Value Run

    1. Gray-Scale Solid: Once you feel like you have a good value run, fuse onto the fabric. 

      • Evaluate your fabrics to produce 7 gradations that transition smoothly in even steps from white as Value 1 to black as Value 7. 

      • Cut 1 square 2˝ × 2˝ from each of the selected fabrics. 

      • Remove the paper backing from the fused fabric, and place your 2˝ squares in order, from light to dark, on the left edge of the gray fabric. Put the light square at the top and the dark at the bottom. 

      • Fuse the squares in place. 

  2. Make Your Gray-Scale Graphic Run

    1. Graphic Gray-Scale: Once you feel like you have a good value run, fuse onto the fabric

      • Evaluate your print fabrics to produce 7 gradations that transition smoothly

      • Cut 1 square 2˝ × 2˝ from each of the selected fabrics, remove the paper backing from the fused fabrics, and place them on the far right side of the gray foundation used in Exercise 1. The lightest value should be on the top and the darkest value at the bottom. Graphic gray-scale value run 

      • Fuse the squares in place. SEVEN-STEP VALUE RUN It is important to have the seven-step value run as a full palette to work with. The solid gray scale allows you to more easily see value differences as you train your eye. The graphic gray scale shows you how to use black-and-white prints. Keep these two scales as a reference tool in your studio.

      • Value 1: the lightest value—white print on white background 

      • Value 2: white background with a little bit of black print 

      • Value 3: white background with more black print 

      • Value 4: equal amounts of black and white 

      • Value 5: black background with a lot of white print 

      • Value 6: black background with a bit of white print 

      • Value 7: the darkest value—black print on black background 

  1. Make Your Color Wheel Solids

    • Once you feel like you have the hues, tints and shades on your wheel, fuse onto the fabric

    • Evaluate your colors carefully—you are making a reference tool that you will use in the future. Compare your selected colors with the completed color wheel (on page XX) to make sure you have the right selection of colors. Cut 1 square 2˝ × 2˝ from each fabric you choose. 

    • Create a color wheel in the center of the gray fabric that has the two gray scales. Start by placing the yellow, red, and blue squares in position as if on a clock: yellow at 12 o’clock, red at 4 o’clock, and blue at 8 o’clock. These three colors are the primary colors. 

    • Place the orange square at 2 o’clock, violet at 6 o’clock, and green at 10 o’clock. These are the secondary colors, the midway points between primaries. 

    • Add tints and shades to these primaries and secondaries. Place the lighter value, the tint, to the inside of each color on your wheel to make an interior ring. Place the darker values, the shades, to the outside of the medium valued, true primaries and secondaries to make an outer ring of 6 shades.

    • Complete the wheel by adding the tertiary colors. Place the pure values of: yellow-orange at 1 o’clock red-orange at 3 o’clock red-violet at 5 o’clock blue-violet at 7 o’clock blue-green at 9 o’clock yellow-green at 11 o’clock See how the tertiary colors contain equal amount of the colors they are between. 

    • Fuse the squares in place. 

    • Complete color wheel OPTIONAL EXERCISE If you’d like to add tints and shades of the tertiary colors, cut out lighter-value triangles, and place them in the inner ring for the tertiary tints. Cut out darker value 2˝ squares, and place them in the outer ring for the shades. Fuse the squares and triangles in place.


IMPORTANT NOTE: These class plans are free downloads on the C&T website. Please do NOT provide detailed instructions for the actual project(s) or technique(s) here—doing so will detract from your book sales.  

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