I spent the weekend trying to get loads of small makes using up my stash and scrap basket. I realised I have been using very strong and hot colours and want to change direction for the summer. My sister called and said she got to spend most of last week at the beach with her two little 3 years olds and I thought yes, beach, I will use that as a starting point. It means summer but the colours are cool and calm.
I trawled through my photo files to see what I had and found this little treasure, a wonderful quirky photo just caught at the right time but what is appealing to me is the array of blues and greens and natural sea colours.
Next I wanted to play with the image to break it down into the various colours. There are many photo editing programs and to be honest I have tried a few and found I haven't got the patience or inclination to become proficient at any of them. One I like is IrfanView (free) and with this I use the effects browser to pixelise, swirl and watercolour the photo and crop the components I am drawn to. Another program I use is Gimp (also free). With this I can choose the size of the finished image and layer the pictures. Using a combination of these I came up with the following mood board. This is saved as an A4 jpeg and I can easily print it and bring with me when I shop.
One of the products I make is quilts and table mats.
Fabric.com has a wonderful feature called a design board where I can look through all fabrics and place them on the design board, move them around and add them all to my basket together.
Here are a selection of fabrics that meet this colour selection, I tried to be very restrained but could play with this all day and end up with hundreds of fabrics.
Finally for those of you using other photo editing software and looking for names and codes of colours
bighugelabs has a colour palette application that can be imported into your own software.
I find all of these very helpful to me when planning new projects, sorting through my stash and planning my shopping. But like all new things it becomes slighly addictive and takes away from valuable making time..you have been warned.
3 comments:
They look very useful and interesting applications, even for who does not make quilts :D
Thanks, it can work just as well for selecting paper or card colours, dyeing yarn, picking jems, mixing paint colours...anything really if you want to break down the actual colours.
It's a very interesting way of thinking...
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