Colour Process - Joanna

I would like to welcome the fabulous Joanna who blogs at Shapemoth to talk about her approach to colour today. 

Hi all, for those who do not know me (and I bet that's a lot of people, LOL), my name is Joanna and I (more or less) regularly blog over at shape-moth.blogspot.com. I would like to thank Jess for including me in the blog-hop and admit that I'm more than flattered to be considered as a quilter who uses the colour exceptionally well.

I'm quite a young quilter as I started sewing about 3 years ago. My colour choices have differed through time and were always highly inspired by the fabrics I use and depended on the project I was making. 

3 years ago I started with very traditional colour combinations. There were some japanese patchwork-inspired projects, lots of earth colours - browns, beiges, muted greens and yellows. Thinking about it, although I had (and spontaneously have) rushed towards more bold and strong colours, I somehow prefer harmonic and 'silent' colour palette. I'm not a huge fan of contrasting colour, not a fan of colour blocking also (however, like in everything, there are exceptions of rules; there are some really fabulous quilts that use completely 'not-mine' colours which I consider brilliant!).

What is important for me:

• That fabrics match when combined - how to explain it? I guess I can’t as that’s very individual thing. For me, certain colour/print combination will work nicely, for others they will not. It’s just the way the brain proceses the information.
• Colours - I drift towards 'muted' and 'silent' colours. I love nature and I highly value peace and silence in life. I guess it highly influences my designs. 
• Fabric prints - I don't like combinations of busy fabrics in contrasting colours. I know that many modern quilters do use them but it's not for me. I tried to do it few times but my brain just doesn't 'see' those colours/prints combinations and I always end up with a mess instead of a nice quilt/block design.

Here are my preferred colour choices/fabric combinations:

And here are more bold colours which I used. It's important to note, that those 2 below are not my original designs, but quilts based on a graphic or print which I found in the net. I really like the fabric/colour combination (hey, that's why I've sewn those quilts) but I wouldn't be able to create such colour combos on my own:

As to where I find my inspirations:

• First of all - fabrics. Colours and combination of colours in whole fabric lines. If I would to choose 3 fabric lines, which I consider the best (because of the colours used) I'd say: 'Cut out and keep' from Cloud9 Fabrics, 'Comma' by Zen Chic and 'Curio' by BasicGrey
• Quilts, graphics, prints. Eye candy which you find in the net. Tons of inspiration, new ways to combine colours, things, which normally I wouldn't try until I saw it somewhere.
• Architecture, billboards, advertisements in shops or patterns on things I (or people I see around) use like bags, boxes, clothes, etc.
• Nature - it has a huge impact on me, how I see world and I how I combine colours. Photos which you take on your holidays/trips/walks are a great colour inspiration (I guess most of you saw already an example of a photo with a colour palette made with it). I used the photo below to create a colour palette for the EPP pillow (which was published in the last Modern Patchwork issue!):

Thank you again Jess and thank to you all, who are visiting and reading!