LET'S TALK ABOUT COLOUR DEFICIENCY with the ColourBlind Quilter

[Music] we have specialized cells in the back of our eyes that allows us to see the color spectrum but unfortunately there's a percentage of the population that for reasons scientists still don't have a clear understanding why cannot see certain colors today's guest tom backgate also known as the colorblind quilter was born with a red green color deficiency and he has developed some strategies on how to choose color palettes that are color blind friendly so grab your sewing and a cup of tea and here's my interview with the color blind quilter [Music] well tom thank you so much for being on the show you're coming to us from scotland but are you in edinboro or glasgow forget just outside the edinburgh it's about 10 miles so right then at the sea beside the the fourth rail bridge so it's uh lovely and sunny today for the first time this year probably and is quilting big in scotland yes it is it's bigger than i thought it was and i joined my local guild recently um january this year and there was a long waiting list to get in so i was very lucky to get a space and then the community is so much bigger than i had actually realized so there there's people all across scotland and there's long armors across scotland as well which are popping up so i'm in a guild of 35 people for just edinburgh and i think there's at least another 10 15 guilds across scotland so it's yeah it's really really picking up popularity especially during pandemic people have taken it as a hobby and gifting to others and stuff so it's amazing so it's your guild is limited to 35 people yeah so because of the venue that they're in and the constitution that governs them they had the limit on it so they had a very long waiting list so i tried to join last year and last august and they were told you know you're on the list don't know when it'll be and then suddenly johnny's like oh we have a space for you so i think i'm the first male member in their 14 year history so it's it's really it's really nice and lovely to the group of people that are all doing the same thing and you know they're all amazing cultures so i feel like i have this amazing pool of people that i can kind of learn and draw from so and then i don't think i would have done if i hadn't been for your recommendations in one of your videos to seek out your local code so i guess i have you to thank for that well it was a game changer for me like just walking into a room and everybody likes to do exactly the same thing and as you say they're just a wealth of information so expert skills everything and yeah i found my tribe [Laughter] and it's that worry that you're not good enough i think that holds a lot of people back and you just have to just jump in there and realize it's good for everybody so how did you come to quilting um i had my first experience at copeland when i was 10 and then primary school in scotland we would do like sewing classes so we would it's like the little canvas and you would do all the different embroidery threads and then those that finished first got to make like a patchwork quilt and a gym bag so i was finished first and got to go through this big massive mountain of scraps and make this kind of you know little gym bag for my gym kit and then really really enjoyed it so after that my grandma used to sew every saturday with her we would go to fabric shop and get embroidery threads and canvases and stuff like that and just really enjoyed that and then i think 2009 was when i properly kind of started really quilting as an adult and getting into it and it was because i live my flat that i lived in was 120 years old so you know drafty cold windows and i wanted to make some blankets for winter you know it was kind of cozy up on the sofa and i had been crocheting for a while but i found it really difficult on my hands and because i worked on the computer like eight ten hours a day i used to get cramped with my fingers from sick holding because she knew um so i went looking for other ways to make blankets and found missouri star quilt company jenny's tutorials i think they had only been on youtube for a very short amount of time so i kind of binge watched them was like yes this is what i want to do i am ordered materials in the local fabric shop didn't have a clue what i was doing just bought stuff i mean i actually sat down on a saturday night and then you clocked thinking i could make a blanket in like an hour you know as you do and then sat down with the pair of scissors and a plank of wood there's a ruler and chopped up these fat quarters with no idea so you know straight lines and then all that and yeah it was a bit of a mess but you know i loved it i i thoroughly loved it i think i stayed up from at 3am doing it and then that was that was kind of when my lovely favorite cooking was born and so i kinda i did it on and off until 2018 and then really got into like you know everyday quilting you know serious heavy heavy duty stuff so you have the challenge that you are colorblind when did you discover that you were color blind and so i first found out in premier one so that's five years old for me and they do these little little dot tests and i can't remember the name of them and the man that invented them but they basically take you and they give you these tests and they determine whether you're colorblind or not but i knew from a young age that i was colorblind you know five years old but i don't think it really kind of understood it and i don't think it kind of hit me until i got to high school like when you know we were in a physics class and it was electric you know wiring plugs and circuitry and i wasn't allowed to do it because i was colorblind in case i blew the school up you know so i had to sit and watch and like you know it wasn't really until high school that started to feel like it was it kind of held me back you know at back that time i mean this is like going back 20 years there were still certain careers you weren't allowed to do when you were colorblind you know so and thankfully a lot of that's changed these days so it kind of it was um it was difficult growing up with it and from the point of view of feeling like you had these limitations placed on you by society you know you can't do this you can't do that are you know going out with your friends and putting on certain outfit thinking looks great and they're like uh no what are you waiting go home change you know not great when you're a teenager so there's several different types of color blindness what colors can you not see so i have um what's known as proton color blindness and so that's to do with the l cones in your eyes which is the long wave length lights so that's the reds so it's also known as red green color blindness and our color vision deficiency as people have started calling it um which i actually prefer as a term i know color blindness is very popular but color vision deficiency feels more descriptive of what it actually is you know i spent years people saying oh do you see in black and white can you not see colors because you know they just assumed that playing this meant you were blind colors and so my main problem is that my eyes don't see enough red light they see too much green light so when i look at red i see green and vice versa um but any colors that then start to include these colors can be confusing you know so blue and purple wrong way round you can often get them confused because of the red and the purple can't see it you know it's just see the blue um but interestingly when i was 17 i started to discover colors like light grays and light blues you know like sky blues pale blues and i would very often get those confused or pink and grays and so i remember going on holiday my friend we just turned 18 first holiday abroad without our parents and then bought what i thought was the most amazing like short sleeve gray summer shirt and took it home i was like that's bright pink i was like oh okay so um so i i mean you can kind of have problems with any color across the spectrum it really depends on the kind of contrast the saturation of the color what is next to the lighting conditions that you're in as well you know if you're in darker lighting conditions i can very often like pick up the wrong completely wrong color and then you see in the daylight you're like oh yeah that's completely obvious other challenges like from colorblind not just from coating it's like you know going to the supermarket trying to buy like ripe bananas you know i've come home some cracking green bananas like what did you buy them for they're like you know green they'll be ready in like weeks and like they look yellow to me under the fluorescent lighting you know or picking clothes or the other favorite moment partner likes to bring me up about is the color of grass after winter he's like you know that yellow patch of grass over there is dead can you go and like break it out and put new seats down like so i go off to the other side of the garden and it's like no no that side i'm like i went to a phase when i was growing up and kind of in my 20s where i was like i felt like my color blindness was getting worse and worse and worse you know as i got older like i went from feeling like there's only one or two colors like wow this is like every color now it was getting confusing but i think that was more my kind of psychological thinking of myself as colorblind i had a limitation and that i was you know making it worse by thinking it was worse and as it started to realize that well you know it's not as bad as you think it is you know if you know tools if you've got people to help you if you use something because now with technology there's all these apps and things that can help and you can even get glasses that can help you see colors the way that you know a normal vision person would see them so i they re recently started to do that actually i'm i'm quite good with colors you know i need a bit of help but i'm actually better than i get myself creative so when you choose colors for your quilt do you start off pulling them and then you ask for help or do you just have safe colors that you know work together when i first started i would i would kind of totally rely on other people i'd be like i want to make a coat and i want orange in it so what colors will go with orange you know like i need four colors for this pattern can you pick four colors for me and then i started to try and say right well i want to pick the colors myself and use like the color wheel and use orange as the dominant color and see if i could you know complement your color scheme you know orange and blue that works very nicely okay now i need two more colors what else can go in there and so i tried to do more and more of it myself now but i do rely on people to help me you know so this this quote behind me this was a recent pattern test that i did and it's the first time i've done kind of 12 colors and picked them all myself and was actually pretty good with the colors apart from the reds you know so i needed three shades of bread and i had one that worked really nicely it was a christmas red but the other two just they just didn't go and i just i sat for about 10 minutes with a cone of shade card and you know color wheel and a hue card and was just like i couldn't get it so i had to ask for help but i was pleased that i got the 11 at the 11 colors that were there and that yeah actually i think it looks pretty good it's gorgeous absolutely gorgeous and i did this at show and tell our guild meets last night we were talking about it and i was saying you know this is this is the first one that i've done like this and i just i just felt kind of relieved and everybody's like oh that's beautiful i love the color choices and i just i feel strange when people say to me i love your choice of color i'm like who me really me does your color deficiency does that affect you seeing value yes and again it kind of when you when you think about the values and the saturations i tend to find that the middle of the wedge of colors so you know in your color theory video you talk about the kind of cone of colors i find the middle of that wedge is the muddiest for me where i can see the least amount of differentiation you know so as the value goes down as the kind of shoes move over i find that they very often like i'll see three colors in the row and they all look the same color so i tend to find that sticking around the outside you know the shades the hues along the top or the grays the acrobatic sticking on those sides is much safer um but but sometimes it depends on the color and depends what the color is made up of and it depends on the lighting that i'm looking at from you know good lighting sometimes i can see it but i can't identify i can't say to that's green or that's red i can say those are two different colors so do you have a favorite color yes i love orange [Music] i love orange it's my like i used to like blue like sky blue is my favorite color and then when it started looking pink to me i just stopped with that and then just orange like it's just such a happy color for me like and i can see it you know from like the yellow oranges more to the golden oranges i can see them all and have no problems with them and i know that it goes with quite a lot so it feels like a good safe choice so like you know if you were to go through my stash you'd probably find more orange orange than anything else just it just makes me feel happy like even my water cup is like you know brighter as i i sit here and look at everything that's armed around me as well yeah for kindred spirits orange i even have my husband making me some some 3d printing and i brought him some orange pla fiber to do it with and funny i like that teal blue on the other side too so that that quilt that you have behind you is just right up my alley thank you yeah i i have started to appreciate tools recently like they were very confusing to me before but now i'm kind of like i quite liked you i think it's quite it's a nice color that i hadn't really been exposed to before i think your oranges become more orangey with teal like i think it really brings out the best in teal whatever that little hint of yellow in it now have you always been a modern quilter or did you start off traditional i've always been modern and i find it very difficult to work with patterned fabrics because of the just the entire range of colors and the more colors in the pattern the harder i find it is to work so i've always stuck with solid quilts solid colors and kind of i do i mean i do like the traditional patterns and and that but sometimes i i just don't know how to color them if that makes sense so i tend to stick with kind of modern quotes that are easier for me to color but i certainly would like to try a couple as i get kind of better at the colors so if we had a relative or a loved one or we were making a quilt for a color deficient person what would you advise us doing i was thinking about this and i was trying to think because you know color can be such a personal thing so i would say that i would try if you can to find out what kind of color blindness or deficiency the person has because that will have an effect on what they can see and then you know if they have a favorite color that's even better than if you can work a palette from the favorite color and you know so like if i was making a quote for a friend and they were their favorite color was orange i would look at maybe a complementary color palette you know so something straight across from it or i would look for colors that have high contrast between them and i would be careful of putting greens together unless it's a certain shade you know it's like a really bright green that's like an emerald green and maybe a more magenta red because you as a red green color blind person i can see the differentiation between those two quite easily and then i would think about trying to avoid colors that are maybe desaturated so that there's it's difficult to differentiate between the two colors i tend to think you know simpler it's better because it can be it can be it can be hard on your eyes as a colorblind person to look at something and you're just like you know if i can't see the differentiation between two colors i just see big blocks of a single color and so a lot of times i don't see the secondary pattern i don't see that you know you know sometimes you have secondary patterns in blocks like if the colors are too similar you can't see them so sometimes the effect is lost on that so sometimes making sure that if it's a secondary pattern that is not two colors that a person has a problem with close together so you know like blue and purple right together in a second pattern like that might be lost on me i might not be able to see the second chapter just keeping blobs of blue everywhere making sense it is making sense really good advice too and you just mentioned that looking at a lot of different colors is hard on your brain do you actually find it fatiguing like if you're on really colorful websites or just in a room with a lot of colors that you tire easier yeah i mean i it could just be psychological but i feel like my eyes physically feel tired when exposed to lots of colors and that as i say it could be a mental thing but it does feel kind of you feel mentally tired afterwards because you break you're trying to make sense of what it is and you think that you figured it out and then you're like oh no no no no and then you start to get confused again and you know i have a favorite computer game that i've loved for like 20 years it's really old it's called zuma and um they brought out a new version i'm so excited but i couldn't play it because it wasn't colorblind friendly so i just died every time within like 30 seconds because i couldn't pick out the colors and it just frustrated me it's interesting that you say that because there's a whole guidebook for website design to make sure that it's color blind friendly yeah it's i mean there's a whole psychology around it and you know i've read a lot of stuff and i my background is websites is marketing and working with a graphic designer and you know i'm sure i used to drive around the bends with colors when you can't see that what color is that what color is that bit there you know and yeah there's a whole theory about like you know if you're if you have a website and you know for example like a data visualization is a common area where like color blindness is hard because if you're relying on red and green to show something i might not be able to see it or i might get it the wrong way around and see the good is the bad and the bad it's the good and so yeah there's a whole study about it and like what are colorblind safe palettes and what to avoid and how to to structure your website but you know generally simpler is better they usually say where possible or and high contrast you can see the difference clearly between two colors that might be a problem so you have now moved into pattern design yeah i do i love to do pattern design and trying to do trying to do it it's just it's colors i think it's confidence with them you know like this quote here this this is an amazing quote for the way that the colors work and when it's opened up it's really fantastic design that uses colors to make triangles and points and everything but i find it very difficult to visualize that when i'm trying to design something and when i sit down and then like how using colors to make these kind of effects and things like that so i think kind of trying my hand at simpler patterns first that are maybe just two-tone patterns you know like a dark color over the background or maybe four tone patterns because they're you know i can find color complement complementary colors that will work easily together before you know adventuring out into really complicated stuff but it's definitely my ambition ambition i find it best when i'm designing a pattern to start off in black and white oh okay and then add the color second because then i get the geometry down and then i get to play with the color so i understand you have a palette of fabric here what do you want to show us yeah so this i brought this palette and i just kind of i wanted to explain how i picked these colors and and the kind of why the shades are kind of working for me so let me just as you can see it's a really kind of bright happy and orange yeah orange in fact two shades of orange there so this i find these kind of colors really easy and i know that there has red here but this particular shade of red i find it really easy to see this it's a kind of it's a slightly darker red it's got a little bit of orange in it yeah team orange any excuse to get orange in my coat yeah but like i find that if you put that beside other reds i'll be able to pick that out as red without any problem you know or even with greens i can pick this out as red and it's just because i find that shade works well and then you know a color that i would always avoid like the plague is this pink this watermelon pink and then but for me like i can see a really nice clear contrast between the red and the pink whereas other shades of pink are maybe a little bit darker and closer to the red would be a no-go for me and i definitely don't see this with grey in it the two oranges the kind of the darker orange and the lighter orange and the again there's they're easy for me there's contrast there so i can see the difference very clearly even in dark light i can see that which is you know i tend to find that as long as i can see it it works well for me now i notice you've got labels on all your fabric is that important for you to do yes so um i'm quite lucky because one of the shops that i order from in the uk they always send a little label saying hi my name is kona and i'm salt and bright ideas on it but this particular one didn't come with it so a little game that i try and play when this happens is that i sit with the shade card and i try and figure out what colors what and then as soon as i've got it or at least i think i've got it i get a little piece of masking tape or painters tape and i just write the name on it and then when i'm getting ready to actually show that what i'll do is on the salvage or salvage however you say that word and i just write it all the way along the length of fabric so that even as i cut the fabric it's still you know if i get like a tiny little bit left i still know that bright idea and because i've got you know i have a statue fabric and it was before i thought about doing this and that like i have no idea what the color is and my partner my poor suffering partner what color is that what color is that did these colors go together you know and he's probably not for years of you know and i'm very lucky that he's very patient with me and but yeah so i mean like you can see that that's really high contrast file you know and that's great for me and that i would i think a color-blind person would love those kind of high contrast you know even if you were to take that and make it on the blue side of life or the green side of the color spectrum just because of such clear steps from one color to the next it's very easy to kind of see that and i have no problem picking that up and saying oh here's the red fabric here's the yellow fabric you know i have another fabric where i get you know this palette more on the blue side and these two here let me just build one these two here the gray and the green like i was told half an hour ago from the switch this is the green this is the gray i don't know because i've seen the names but like a half of their garage which one switch and i put i did that thing where i try and put them in order of all the colors together i was just like my partner's like no try again try again so you know that's just what daily life is like for me you know if i if i don't label it or i don't clearly see it i'm just like don't know let's just try another color you've had a youtube channel but you've stepped away from it for a little while have you just taken a break yeah so um just work has kind of become really busy and i'm a singing teacher my other side of life and we do teacher training for singing teachers so we run a conference like cook on every year for singing teachers around the world so it just it kind of saps all my energy for a couple of months and just i have no brain space left for anything else but that's all finished now so i'm looking forward to getting back to my channel and making videos and and really kind trying to dive into this topic of color deficiency and and what it is and how it works and try and show people some simulations of how it works there are some amazing tools out there that can show you a color palette and then they can show you what it looks like for the different types of color blindness and so you can kind of get a visualization of what it looks like through my eyes and and it it's funny because i look at these and they sometimes lift them together i'm like they all look the same to me i definitely would watch any video that you showed me some tips on how to quilt for a color uh color deficient person and if any of the viewers have any other suggestions on videos please put them down in the comments below so if people want to get a hold of you how do they find you so they'll find me on instagram uh look at the colorblind quilter and it's color with a u because i'm in the uk um or they can find it on my website which is thecolorblindculture.com and on youtube as well colorblind culture and all all under those titles with you and there's now a website called coolers and that helps you with choosing palettes yeah and that's actually one of the websites that i was just talking about it shows you all the color palettes but on the menu where you can filter things there's a drop down and it lists all the different types of color blindness and you can it will show you what they look like to color blind person so if you go on the website later and have a look and pick protonomily as a colorblind type you'll be able to see how i see all those color palettes thank you so much for being on the show today [Music] i hope you've enjoyed my interview with the color blind quilter he has generously prepared a free handout on colorblind friendly color palettes is a fantastic reference that you can download from his website thecolorblindquilter.com he also has a youtube channel with tips and pointers so check that out too all his contact info links to his channel and his website will also be in the notes below next up on karen's quilt circle is zakiya pierce of cozy quilts for scholars she is making quilts for young adults heading off to college and need that extra support that a quilt can provide you don't want to miss it so be sure to subscribe i've had so many amazing guests on karen's quilt circle you don't want to miss any of them so make sure you subscribe and check out the playlist last week i uploaded the 10th installment of my vlog on the story of my fourth of july quilt it's kind of epic and a lot of fun so please check it out so if you like this video please give it a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell beside the subscribe button so that youtube will notify you when i make new videos you can also find me on facebook instagram and pinterest at jessicadenquilts and of course my website jessica jessicadenquilts.com so take care and i'll see you next time

Channel: Just Get it Done Quilts

Views: 20,252

Rating: 4.9752746 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, karen brown, just get it done quilts, quilting tutorial, beginner quilting, fast and easy, diy, color blind, colourblind skills

Id: Vm5E6kCvAO4

Length: 27min 24sec (1644 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 12 2021