I find yellow one of the hardest prints to buy online, as it varies greatly. Is it bright yellow or mustard or ochre?? It’s also hard to find a good bright yellow print.

Yellow + Cool

One of my recent finishes, inspired by a Moors Palace in Portugal, allowed me to use a great mustard color with these great cool colors of navy blue and aqua.

Katarina Roccella’s Imprint line for Art Gallery Fabrics:

Or how about a mix of blues and a little purple, and yellow’s as a feature/focus. 

1. Cotton + Steel; 2. Alison Glass; 3. Art Gallery House Design; 4. Lizzy House; 5. Karen Lewis; 6. Skinny LaMinx; 7. Jeni Baker; 8. Lizzy House; 9. Leah Duncan

Yellow + Warm

Last month, on the Orange post there was a great warm print palette that included yellow. So what about yellow in projects with solids??

This project, Peach Melba, is a tutorial I did for Sew Mama Sew, I loved the yellow with the mix of pinks and berries in this project. I used Kona Cotton Buttercup, Berry, Cerise, Baby Pink with Ash Grey and Bone.

One of my WiP’s is this quilt top, Rangers Station, using the amazing bright Oakshott cottons The middle block is made from their autumn bundle, which have those brilliant yellows, and then the border is Lipari (08)).

Yellow + Neutrals

Bright yellow and white solids is one of my favorite combinations, though I have not made a quilt with just these colors. I just love the crispness and brightness of these two colors together.

Yellow and Grey is a great combination. One of my first ever projects, when I started sewing, was a patchwork yellow, grey and white kiwi which I love.

Monthly Tip

Use design or retail magazines as inspiration for your color palettes. Here are some examples:

1. Architecture/Design magazines feature great modern palettes. My favorite US based magazine is Dwell.

2. Retail Store Magazines, my favorites in the use are West Elm, Crate and Barrel (+ CB2).

Yellow + Neutral

Yellow + Blues

Monthly Resources

Book: Color Theory: A essential guide to Color by Patti Mollica

Website and Tool: Design Seeds  – A site that offers two color palettes each day, great resource.

Monthly Challenge

This month’s challenge is sponsored by two great companies.

The first is Robert Kaufman who is providing the winner 1 yard Highlight, the Kona Cotton Solids 2016 Color of the Year.

Talk about some great yellow inspiration, check out their Lookbook here. Two of my favorite quilts, that they will be providing as kits in March, are:

Heather Jones’ Trip the Light, I love the use of highlight, pickle, wasabi, white, snow and oyster.

and Carolyn Friedlander’s Blake Quilt, that mixes in some of her neutral low-volume fabrics from Architexture and Doe with Kona solids highlight and pickle.

Also, the Fat Quarter Shop is providing a $20 gift card.
The Challenge this month,  is to make your own 3 x 3 mosaic palette of  (9) prints, that features yellow as the main color (I recommend at least 1/3 of the palette). Please post the mosaic, that is linked to either:

• a blog post explaining your process/inspiration (feel free to grab the widget above to display on your blog),
• or to an Instagram pic (using the url),
• or a Flickr pic (using the url).

To give you time to explore your palette, the link-up will open around the 15th February (next color series blog post), and a winner will be announced by 8pm Monday 22nd February. I hope you all have fun.

(Note: I use Big Labs Mosaic Tool to create the mosaic. To get the image URL right click on the image and “Copy Image Location” and paste it into the tool).