Color Play

Color Play Friday: Kla Ha Ya Days

Hi Guys! Thank Goodness it’s (Color Play) Friday!

More about Color Play Friday:

Trina from In An Otter Life and I created Color Play Friday one day after a nice trip to the fabric store together.

 Here are the rules:

  1. Each week, Trina or I will select a picture from our joint Pinterest board. These are all pictures that one of us has taken on our adventures.
  2. We each create a palette using colors from that picture
  3. We then create a bundle of 5-8 fabrics that is inspired by that palette. They don’t have to be an exact match to our palette, and we can throw in contrasting or accent colors, but the bundle should look inspired by the palette.
  4. We don’t see anyone else’s palette or bundle before we post on Friday.
  5. That’s it! It’s going to be so fun to see what we each come up with.

I took this week’s photo at Kla Ha Ya Days, a festival held each summer in my hometown of Snohomish, Washington. There’s normal festival entertainment: carnival, parade, icecream eating contest… Then you have the more quirky events: hot air balloon glow, bed races (yes, real beds on wheels), a baby crawling race, and the classic frog jump contest. You can’t make this stuff up.

  8061e351dd217cdccdff8206b2265bbb

A couple of summers ago, my family went to watch the balloon glow and stopped at the carnival beforehand so the kids could go on some rides. This photo was a failed attempt at trying to get a picture of my son on the ride, but I liked how the movement created a blur. It almost gives you the same sort of dizzy feeling you get when you are on a carnival ride with lights whizzing by.

 Laurel and Pine The Kiddos

It was a bit of a magical night watching the rides and dancing with my kids in a field while waiting for the balloons to fill up. It ended up being too windy and the balloon glow was a bust, but the time together as a family is one of the best memories!

 Laurel and Pine Balloon Glow Dancing

So, here’s my palette and bundle!

Kla Ha Ya Days Palette and Bundle

I loved in this picture how the bright colors of the swings contrasted with the slate grey of the sky at sunset.

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Alison Glass, Ex Libris, Grey Panel

Zen Chic, Figures, Daisy in Ocean

Micheal Miller, Dumb Dot in Lilac

Karen Lewis, Blueberry Park, Allotments in Coral

Me and My Sister Designs, Ticklish, Joking Around in Yellow

Bari J, Petals and Plume, Rumpled Sour

A note about scale:

  • While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to In an Otter Life to see what Trina came up with and to Shimmy and More to see Steph’s bundle!

You can also head over to my Color Play Friday page to see my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

Here’s the photo I chose for next week:

 Gummy Bears pic

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with me via email, or by tagging me on Instagram.  

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Color Play Friday: Jetty Island Driftwood

Welcome back to Color Play Friday!

Today we have an image that I took on a family boat trip at the very end of last summer. We had spent the afternoon in the Puget Sound and stopped at Jetty Island for a little bit before the sun went down. Jetty Island is a fun little place that can only be reached by boat. In the summer months, the parks department provides a 60-person, pay-by-donation ferry to shuttle people back and forth to the island. Sometimes you can wait an hour or more to get on, but the ride takes all of two minutes and is a total hit with the kids.

I loved the look of these tree roots in the ‘almost-sunset’ light and the way the orange moss just lit up. The main thing in this image that I knew I had to feature was the complimentary orange and blue. I also chose to add in the green from the grass to give it more color, since the palette was looking really brown.

I’m not usually a huge fan of brown or orange, but am in love with all of these fabrics! I especially love the Tiger Lily print, as I think it ties everything else in the palette together nicely.

Jetty Island Driftwood Palette and Bundle

Don’t forget to go check out Trina’s palette at In an Otter Life!

Here are the links to the fabrics in my bundle:

Heather Ross, Tiger Lily, Floral Medallion in Brown

Amy Ellis, Modern Neutrals, Patchways in Cocoa

Zen Chic, Reel Time, Lenses in Ochre

Cotton and Steel Basics, Dottie in Gnome Hut

Art Gallery Fabrics, Prisma Elements in Albite Latte

Heather Rosas, Sea Life, Ripples in Cream

Fig Tree & Co., Aloha Girl, Lania Shirt in Lagoon

  • While I think scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always to scale. With the editing I do to get them all in the image, it just takes too much time to make sure they’re all perfectly sized. Do your research before making any purchases!

Color Play Friday: Stilliguamish River at the Big Four Mountain

 Happy Friday, everyone!

I’m so excited because today is the relaunch of our Color Play posts!

A couple of months ago, I had a chat with my real-life quilting buddy, Trina from In an Otter Life. She thought it’d be fun to play along, and together we thought of some ways to make Color Play better and even more fun. Here are our rules:

  1. Each week, one of us will select a picture from our joint Pinterest board. These are all pictures that one of us has taken in our adventures.
  2. We each create a palette using colors from that picture
  3. We then create a bundle of 5-8 fabrics that is inspired by that palette. They don’t have to be an exact match to our palette, and we can throw in contrasting or accent colors, but the bundle should look inspired by the palette.
  4. We don’t see the other person’s palette or bundle before we both post on Friday.
  5. That’s it! It’s going to be so fun to see what we each come up with.

Our first photo comes courtesy of Trina and was taken at a very popular hiking spot here in Washington. This river eventually makes it’s way down through our little town.

Big Four Ice Caves River Palette and Bundle

Stilliguamish River at Big Four Moutain Palette and Bundle

The thing about this picture that jumped out at me was the broad range of greens in the water and trees and the blue grey of the light reflecting on the water’s surface…. how gorgeous is that river?! Makes me want to hike up there just to wade in.

Here are links for all the fabrics in my bundle:

Cotton + Steel Basics, Sprinkle in Summercamp

Joel Dewberry, Pristine Pop in Basil

Joel Dewberry, Mosaic Bloom in Asparagus

Kristen Berger, Sharrows in Blue

Cotton + Steel Basics, Dottie in Cloud

Don’t forget to head over to In an Otter Life to see what Trina came up with.

Happy Sewing!

Color Play: July 3, 2015

Sorry for the delay- there was BBQing and loving on friends to be done!

I only have one palette this week. I wanted to make this photo into some bundles, but I realized that I have an embarrassingly small number of low-volume fabrics. I gravitate to the bright ones, I suppose. Anyway, I didn’t think I could do those clouds justice with the colors I have.

Backyard Sunset

             So, I chose this photo for my inspiration. I’ve been waiting a couple of years for this hollyhock to bloom not knowing what color it would be. I can safely say that if I could have chosen ANY color, this would have been it. This beauty is over 6 feet tall and by my front door, so I’m so glad it’s a pretty color!

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Hollyhocks Palette

Hollyhock Bundle 2Hollyhock Bundle 3Hollyhock Bundle 4Hollyhock Bundle 1

Color Play: June 25, 2015

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Color Play. I skipped last time, since it was my kids’ first week off of school and the hubby was out of town. But I’m happy to be back at it.

This week, my color inspiration is my daughter Lauren. Nearly thirteen, this girl is just coming into her own in her fashion choices. She had been begging dad to let her dye the tips of her hair blue and was allowed to once school was out. She is a wise, godly, brave, strong and beautiful girl and I am in awe of her.

A Day at the Lake_

This first picture is from our ill-fated first boat trip of the year. We got to the lake and realized the inner tube wasn’t inflated enough, then we ended up broken down in the middle of the lake (which I’m sure will be a funny story eventually).

But at least she looked adorable. I was inspired by how the colors in her bathing suit, top and hair worked so well together. And I love the pinks in that rose. A Day at the Lake Palette  Day at the Lake Bundle 1 Day at the Lake Bundle 2 Day at the Lake Bundle 3Next is just a snapshot of her in our yard. I think black, white and red are such classic, bold colors to wear, and wanted to play around with the addition of teal into that mix.    Lauren in Late June_Lauren in Late June Palette Late June Bundle 1Late June Bundle 3Late June Bundle 2

Thanks for joining me today, and happy sewing!

~L

Color Play: June 11, 2015

Welcome to the first-ever Color Play post! I’m so excited to start this weekly series. My goal is to show you how to turn the colors surrounding you every day into inspiration for your next project.

Each week, I’ll be taking photos of the interesting things around me and turning each photo into a palette in my sketch pad. I’ll then use one of those palettes to pull bundles from my stash. It’s amazing to see fabrics combined that you never would have thought to put together.

So let’s get started!

Birthday Flowers

Birthday Flowers Palette

Last week I turned 36. These flowers were sitting on my front porch early in the morning on the day after my birthday…. a gift from one of my best friends. Since then, they have been filling my whole house with their yummy scent!

Sunset Drive Sunset Drive Palette

Saturday was a gorgeous day here in the PNW. Unfortunately, I had to spend a lot of it inside. In the evening, my husband and I thought a family trip to Dairy Queen was in order. This photo was taken as we drove through some farmland on the way.

Sunday Morning in June Palette

The last palette has no photo. It was inspired by the colors people were wearing at my church on Sunday morning, but I didn’t want to be snapping photos of the congregation! There were a lot of teals (including 3/5 of my own family), some pinks and corals and a little bit of yellows and greens too. I chose this palette to recreate as fabric bundles because the colors were too fun to pass up!

Here are the fabric bundles I pulled that were inspired by the Sunday Morning palette.

Sunday Morning Bundle 2

First we have a group of midtones with very geometric prints. I don’t LOVE it, but I do like that orange with those teals.

Sunday Morning Bundle 3

For this one, I took just the lightest shades. It screams baby blanket to me!

Sunday Morning Bundle 1 Sunday Morning Bundle 4

I really loved these last two. They best represent what I was seeing on Sunday morning. And I would never have thought to make those combinations without having done this exercise. I encourage you to try it out yourself!