Who is ROY G BIV and why does he need to be on my quilt??

Without ROY you would have a white or black quilt, that's why!

ROY G BIV is an acronym for:
Red OrangeYellow Green Blue Indigo and Violet

For many quilters, colour can be the most challenging decisions in making a quilt. We have chosen the blocks, know what size we want, and are ready to hit the quilt shop, but where do we begin?
Take heart..... and look around you. You wear clothes that work well together, you decorate your home and enjoy what you have? Trust your instincts and use these easy tips:

• Pick a colour and use a bit of its complement. Choose blue and add a touch of yellow, purple with some orange. Don't like orange? Then move towards a peach, rust or salmon.

• Pick up some samples or booklets at your local paint store. See how colours are grouped together. Cut up the samples and rearrange them, try different groupings. Talk about what you like and dislike.

• Try a colour study. Find a picture you like and make a study of ALL the colours you can identify in the picture. See if you can determine the relative quantities of each. Here's an example:

Here's another example:

I've tried to put the colours in approximate proportion to one another and found there was more brown/taupe/grey than I had seen in the picture.

Here another study I made from the same photograph, but this time I played with the colour proportions. I reduced the quantity of pinks and greatly increased the greens. I used papers that I had painted.

Tomorrow I'll do a colour study of one of my art quilts and we can look at colour, and value....another critical element of design.