colour wheel – tierneycreates

Thought I would share a quick update on the Colour Wheel quilt/wall hanging I am working on using a pattern from the book Quilt Color Workshop by T. Bruecher, B. Greenberg, L. Goldsworthy, and J. Adams (2014).

If you are just joining us, here are the two previous posts giving you background on this project: Color Sorting and What’s On the Design Wall: So Much Color!.

Here is where I left off in the March 24th post What’s On the Design Wall: So Much Color!, looking at the 12 sets of 8 fabric scraps in the different colorways:

I labeled the image with the colorway name, I don’t have my actual design wall labeled.

Over the past couple of days I’ve ironed and trimmed the scraps to the size required by the pattern:

Then I made the strata for each colorway, cut into a wedge with a 30 degree ruler and put them backup on the design wall in order:

It is really cool in person, I am surprised how nice the color wheel layout looks!

Now to sew it all together, add a white center, and appliqué it to a background square.

I have two sets of trimmings (from each side of each strata to create the wedges) of each colorway and I am working out an idea of what to do with them.

Most likely I will use them for some type of inner border for the quilt. I laid them out on the design wall to hang out until I decide what to do with them.

Hmmm…

I did not realize the scope of the project when I decided to do it…

This is a follow up to the post Color Sorting, in which I share my plans to make a Color Wheel out of fabric scraps like in the book Quilt Color Workshop by T. Bruecher, B. Greenberg, L. Goldsworthy, and J. Adams (2014), that I borrowed from the library.

I didn’t realize how ambitious this project would be when I decided to create the Color Wheel to use as a teaching resource when I teach an art quilting workshop in September 2024.

I’ve finally completed sorting 8 different scraps for each of 12 colorways to create the quilt, and it is all up on my design wall:

It took a long time to get to this point and it involved a lot of fabric scrap archeological digging through my fabric scrap collection!

I started with reds, purples and oranges using this box of scraps:

By the time I got to greens and blues, which I saved until the end, I was coughing from fabric scrap dust!

I feel like I really know the color wheel now after a couple days of working on this project. I feel like I’ve lived and breathed (literally) the color wheel in fabric!

If you are curious how the colors breakdown, or want a refresher, here you go:

PRIMARY COLORS

Red (R)
Yellow (Y)
Blue (B)

SECONDARY COLORS

Orange (O)
Green (G)
Violet/Purple (V)

TERTIARY COLORS

Red-Orange (RO)
Yellow-Orange (YO)
Yellow-Green (YG)
Blue-Green (BG)
Blue-Violet (BV)
Red-Violet (RV)

I’ve labeled them on my Design Wall image below:

Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange and Blue-Violet took me a long time to figure out. I thought I knew color but I did not know/understand Tertiary Colors as much as I thought I did.

It was a good, even if painful at times, exercise to complete.

Now I need to iron all those scraps, cut them to the size in the pattern, sew each set of the 12 sets of 8 strips together and use a 30 degree ruler to cut them into wedges.

The order you see the individual strips arranged in might change as I refine the order of the fabric strips for each of the 12 colorways.

I am hoping to eventually get the fabric scrap lint out of my lungs…