Slow Quilt Monday--Consider Color

If you follow my blog or podcast, you'll know that at the moment I'm not particularly in a slow quilt mode. Several months of no-time-to-quilt makes Sandy a pent-up-quilter-ready-to-explode-with-fabric. I'm compensating for the dry period now by churning out several immediate-gratification projects. I'll get over myself soon enough and return to former ways. But even while I'm spinning through a variety of projects, my brain is actually still in slow quilt mode. I'm still pondering and brewing. I have some mental quilts I've been working on for some time. I believe after the holidays I'll be going back to having things hanging on my design wall that are talking to me.

My Design Study Group is drawing near to the end of the Lorraine Torrance book Fearless Design for Every Quilter that we've been using for the last year or so. Admittedly, we didn't follow the process to the letter. Sometimes we did homework, sometimes we did the homework assignment right in our session together. Sometimes we said we were going to do homework and didn't. You know how that goes. Sometimes we critiqued, most times we just oohed and aahed. And laughed. Always laughed.

The group has said it wants to continue. And as we discussed how we might continue, the overwhelming interest was in working more with color. We're starting to explore what books we might decide to work through next. One of our members showed me a book at our guild meeting this week that I fell in love with. I think it's a definite contender. I also think it must come to live with me. Time to head to Joanns (where she told me she got it) with a coupon to see if I can do better than Amazon pricing.

So for today's Slow Quilt Monday post, I'm thinking color. With the work we've done in the Design Study Group, and with my Total Color Tuesday posts, I have been challenged to look at color combinations I wouldn't normally consider. I want to keep pushing that. So this week, as part of my Slow Quilt Movement process, I'll be paying close attention to color in the world. As our leaves disappear and the usual winter grayness descends on my area, I'll be looking for monochromatic color schemes in my backyard--the play of neutrals as things hunker down for winter. When I go to my stash, I'll continue to pull out the color wheel and play with creating color combinations from my fabric, just to see what it would look like if....

If you're needing a little slow quilting in your life, I encourage you to join me in just paying attention to color this week. Pull out your colored pencils and make some sketches, using colors you wouldn't normally use. Play with your stash. Take pictures of your yard and look at the palettes that appear. When you catch yourself staring off into space at work, let your eyes land on something and consider what color that thing is, and what colors you might put with it. Dream in color.