Sunrise Quilt Studio

I'm not sure why, but lately I have had problems choosing fabric colors for my quilts. Perhaps it is because I have been too busy to work on my own quilts and am out of practice. It may also be that I have been studying color theory and realizing that there is a lot more to choosing colors than I had previously known. Going by instinct can work, but I think I have been over-thinking my choices the past few months. Finishing the Blue Lily quilt has been difficult. I think I have made my final fabric choices, pin the quilt on my design wall, and after looking at it for a few days I realize I don't like it.   The orange pieced background above was my first choice. I thought using complementary colors would be a great choice. But this background overpowers the lily appliques. I also learned that orange isn't the complement of blue on the Ives color wheel, but that orange-yellow was the complement. I didn't like orange-yellow, though. It was also too strong.

I hand-dyed some yellow tones a few days ago. They are the 3 fabrics on the left. Since I didn't have any gray dye, I used the complement of yellow which is violet. The photo doesn't show the tones in their true color. They are actually a mustard color. I think I now have a wide enough range of yellows to use in my color quilt. The tubs below are what I used to dye my fabrics in. The tub on the right is a pale yellow. It's the 4th fabric on the left. The yellow dye is very strong and I wanted a very pale yellow. I may still need to dilute the yellow even further to get a paler yellow. I'll have a better idea when I start auditioning the fabrics together in the quilt design.