Color Choices

Whew! Now I know how to get comments .. ask for your opinion. Thanks. I did hear from Marcia at Quilters Cache and she is fine with me using her border for a quilt to be entered in a show. Not sure what I'll do. Her border is definitely the easiest to put together. The one on the left is next and the one on the right is the hardest. Thanks again for all your input. Now . . to color! No longer am I going to say I have bad taste in color. Gail and I were discussing color and I came to the conclusion that my color choices may not suit everyone but they suit me. I quilt because I love to piece and quilt, not because I'm making a quilt for a purpose. Thinking back, the few times that I've had to make quilts to match someone's bedroom or to match something, I have struggled with the color choices. But most of the time, I'm just making a quilt so I can have something to piece and something to quilt and therefore, there's no stress in choosing the colors, I just pick what I like and therefore, I like what I've picked! :) My husband is an engineer (need I say more?) and his favorite color is probably any shade of beige. I make him crazy with my colors. I'd love to have lime green walls in my bedroom, with purple carpet! Not glow in the dark, hideous lime . . but just a hint of lime, a very happy shade of lime! One day we're going to have a house that we plan to keep forever and that's exactly what color my bedroom will be and . . I'll already have lots of quilts to match. I want happy colors. I want colors that make me smile. I am so surprised Vince and I ever got married. Remember, his favorite color is beige. We met on the internet . . oh, my gosh. Can you believe it? But it was 13 years ago when things were safer (and I was braver). After months of e-mail and talking on the phone, we decided the safest thing to do was meet halfway so we'd each have our own cars and if we didn't like each other, we could just leave. He lived near Atlanta, I lived in Lake Charles, LA. So, we met at Navarre Beach, FL. Well, I had on black pants and a shocking hot pink jacket with some kind of jewels. He must've wondered right then about me. The second time we met, I had on a very bright (almost neon) lime green outfit and we were waiting outside in line at a restaurant. This little green lizard hopped out of the bushes and almost landed on my shoulder. He kept hanging around and Vince said "he thinks you're his mother because of that outfit." I still have both those outfits but they're about 20 sizes too small! Back to the quilts, I do want to be effective with the colors I choose. Here's an example of colors that didn't work and with just a simple change, they did work. This was a stash quilt and like so many of my quilts, I start out without a clue what fabrics will be used. This is from Judy Martin's book, Shining Star Quilts. The center of the quilt on the left just did nothing for the quilt. Most of the time, I would have said, heck with it and left it but because this quilt has purple and green and orange, (my favorites!), I wanted it to be right. So, I auditioned a few fabrics for the center, decided the orange worked better and then removed the center and replaced it with the orange. That quilt still isn't quilted. I was recently working with an editor of a magazine and we were going over a couple of designs and she told me that my colors were just too bright. She said she couldn't imagine those quilts being used in most bedrooms. So, I tried to tone things down a bit. I was working on a pattern and I made the colors a bit more "normal". When I was talking with the buyer for Brewer Sewing, she told me that she had just returned from quilt market and the only thing people were buying were brights and she thought I'd be better off to make the cover quilt using bright colors! Go figure . . you can't please everyone so I think I'll just try to please ME! I say . . have fun! If you're happy with the colors you're working with, you'll be happy with your finished quilt. Judy