Colour Process - Julianna

The final post in the colour series is by the talented Julianna, who blogs at Sewing Under Rainbow. 

I could talk about colors all days. But this doesn't mean that I use some exceptional color ways. Pretty much opposite: I use only a few color ways, which I love the most. And I'm not bored with them so far! I think that using standards you love, doesn't mean that it will be boring. It can be really challenging (for example if you decide to make little changes or use your favorite color scheme in some tricky way). You don't have to use over and over different color ways. There's nothing wrong about repeating success. I am not aware of any rules on this, aren't you? :) So if you feel, that there's no need to change your world of colors, don't change a thing. Don't follow the newest trends or any rules set by others. Just be yourself. This will always ends up with creating awesome things! 
But on the other hand, don't avoid opportunities of challenging yourself a little bit and use colors or color schemes you don't really like. Great opportunity to experiment is taking part in swaps or in events organized by quilting shops (i.e.: Block of the month, where you receive fabrics to be used in particular pattern).

This is more or less everything I would like to write, but since it's a short descprition of my world of colors, I prepared also a few "technical" conditions which could help you in making your good color choices. 

Daylight
Choose colors in the daylight. It may happened that you choose right colors when it's dark. But it may also happened that you will make some mistakes and you won't be pleased with your color choices.
I ignored once this rule while sewing Christmas pillow. I wanted to use cheerful lime and red. I didn't remember what exact tone had lime fabric I've chosen, but I was truly convinced that this is the one I was looking for. And I piece the pillow top. On the next day, I was crushed. The colors didn't look together as I expected. I quickly piece another top, this time selecting colors in the daylight. You can judge the results by your own (on left my color failure, on the right choosing fabrics at the daylight):

Nature
I read somewhere that if some color schemes exist in nature, it will always look good in handmade items. Even though, there might happen that you won't be able to create such scheme, because you don't have fabrics in the exact tone "used" by nature and crucial for the whole scheme.
I always loved red tulips or poppies on spring. Juicy green grass with lot of red flowers. I wanted to repeat it in our living room. But I failed with choosing the right shadow of green and whole scheme looked a bit artificial. There was nothing right about it (unfortunately I don't have any photos of this failure).

Follow your intuition
I believe that people are divided into two groups. People who were born with color intuition and from almost first try create wonderful color schemes. The second group are people who have to develop their hidden color intuition. 
If you are natural born colorist, you don't need any advices on how to create wonderful color schemes. If your color intuition is hidden or lost somewhere, with a little help of color theory, you'll soon become a master in selecting colors. After some time of being familiar with rules of color theory, you'll slowly forget about these rules and your hidden intuition will replace knowledge about colors. So my only advice for you is to learn color theory, sew a lot of things and then forget about all rules and start creating your color schemes.

Finding the right pattern
Recently I wrote a guest post on how I choose patterns for my works. If you're interested in this theme, click HERE:)

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To prove that I'm pretty boring with my color choices I put here a mosaic of some of my works. If you find there some color ways not mention above, this means that I was pushed (by someone or something) to challenge myself. But then I had to immediately sew something in 'my' colors:)

PS. Thank you so much Jess for inviting me to your series! I'm sure that your posts and guest post of invited bloggers will help people in making their color choices. I hope also that mine post will help a few quilters to believe in themselves:)

A massive thanks to Julianna and all the guest bloggers in this series who put so much time and thought into their posts. It has been a great learning experience for me, and hopefully some of you as well.