Ombre Quilts - A Thousand Colors at Your Fingertips

hello you want to learn how to use ombre fabrics and make beautiful quilts with ease stay with me and I will share with you the magic of working with hombres and you'll feel like a color Pro hombres plus color is total quilt magic for me we're gonna go through this video and learn more about hombres I'd like you to be comfortable with color I would like you to learn about tints and tones more than you already know and I want you to get fantastic results and this will happen when we unleash the magic of hombre fabrics because they're beautiful to work with nothing to shy away from and we're going to delve in with a beginner project from my book called modern madras table topper and it's a very kind of approachable first project because it just uses three fabrics on one side and we're going to dial down in you're gonna learn some skills and then those skills you can use and apply them to other projects in the book so let's dig into color and value here I have the modern Madras table runner and this is the first project in my book and you can see that it goes from light all the way down to dark the other side also is light to dark but in a slightly different way today we're just going to focus on this side and I'm going to walk us through value in color so if we look at this let's just talk about this first we can see what's happening here the left side of the table runner starts light and the whole thing crescendos down gradient down ombres down into the darkest dark the secondary thing we have going on here which is really interesting and makes the piece dynamic and what we'll talk about today is well this is going light to dark we have a transparency effect happening in the center also going light to dark however the values and the color range horizontally are talking to one another and they're relating to each other so that it makes a really beautiful piece and this is a beginner project that you're going to learn putting this together and how we'll move the squares around and then you apply these skills to the projects that are later in the book which is like the dawn star and the sunset lake I only use three embrace for this whole piece I've got this ombre and these are full range hombres if you do a like mirrored range ombre and you want to get the same amount of depth you might need to pick more colors and then we use this ombre which is like the pink all the way into the deep chocolates and I'm also using this ember ombre which is really beautiful with a dark red to the very soft even this light buttery yellow so let's talk about the the color of what's in these three hombres got one and two and three and I love using my color wheel which is here so what's important to do here for me visually is to just to step back on these brights these brights I find distracting so I use a little cutout circle of white to get rid of those bright colors and I can put this in the center so now what we're working with is all of these beautiful tints and tones these are all tints and tones and these are shades and this is the palette I find the most exciting because it's just not as as typical and when you look at this modern madras tablecloth we're right like in that range so there you see that we're going from these colors in here the tones and the tints all through these deep reds even down to like these Browns over here and then we've got the light yellows maybe we don't have as much as those greens but maybe we're more like or more like in here and so this is what we're going for and this is what I find so exciting and so beautiful about embrace because you're getting that range in just a few fabrics so now we're gonna play with the actual fabrics and show you how I lay this out and follow along with me and see how we play with the value the one of the secrets of working with ombre fabrics is definitely cut more than you need because that's what's the fun part that's what you want to start playing and you don't want to have to stop playing to cut more so this is like a kid in the candy shop that you've got all your colors laid out you have more than you need and then you start to play piecing your blocks together to get the feeling that you want so I'm gonna start with the middle panel and work down and build the outside as I'm working down now this is not going to be exactly like the one I just showed you because I'm doing it a different time and I have a different feeling and I have a different kind of you know day so I will not be doing the exact same thing but it'll be similar so I want to have my center line set up say three blocks there so I've got my lightest of the lights of the entire group my palest value and then I'll put Pink's on each side so these are a little bit darker than this and I'm going to start working down that way a little bit darker a little bit darker and then in between here I get to choose whatever bars I want and I want some graphic dynamic things happening some graphic dynamic kind of punches of color so I'll put a dark one here and I feel like choosing this let's try that there and I'll go for maybe this nice strong pink now here I'm going to put let's see do I have these do not have a bar in them so those go up to here and then remember this is my Center and then I'm gonna choose a little darker darker one and see how I see how I turn this from here to here to create that definition between these two blocks and that's not strong enough remember we're doing that transparency effect so I'm going to take this out and I'm gonna put a little bit maybe a little bit deeper these may move these may move but you see how I'm working down the center line and let's see what color bars here I like this pink so we've got this dark value here so now I think I want to put a dark value to balance maybe over here and then let's try let's try this like that there and then we can go light here and I might even want to go lighter let's try that there and now we're going to introduce this pink because now this is still a deeper see how this is still a deeper value than this color there's more saturation it's also a richer color let's try and add these Pink's now the beginning of adding these Pink's man let's add this down here and this read again this Reds a little bit deeper than that so we are playing playing playing and that to me is too close in value I probably wouldn't choose that I want to go darker let's try darker names right there that color there and then let's do a little lighter color here so when we're sitting here playing with as you can see how I'm not sure I might change maybe this one here and go down into here but this is the general idea of how we play and how we manipulate the color and if for some reason Pink's not your jam then you can take some of the pink out and replace it with a lighter color and then this of course has to go darker if this because these are twos the same value now so then we'd maybe change this out and we put this color in or this color in so that's to show you we could even go here and there's all there's basically all kinds of puzzles that you can do and playing with it I think maybe that's where I want to be at and then I think I might go a little deeper with this one and maybe bring this back in so again you've got all of this play play squares that you couldn't you could have fun with so that's how you work through your your light to darker and your light to darker so with your remaining pieces continue because now we're going to go into the darks and you bring up these Pink's at the very end so you get an idea of what I'm doing and just continue on and then you make your blocks and then you sew them together and all of the information is in the modern madras pattern in the book so definitely get the book and make this if you'd like and if you want to do a whole quilt just repeat this concept another four times or five times you have a beautiful lab quilt I hope this helps you I hope you understand that there is no wrong way to do it but the more aware you are of your value changes and the more you pay attention to what's happening the I think maybe the results will be really great and you'll enjoy the process one other key factor in addition to cutting more than you need is definitely back away walk out of the room take a picture with your smartphone but you want to be able to walk away and then come back and look at it and walk away and poom come back and look at it so it feels fresh and that's when you see oh that colors not right there I'm gonna switch it once you've got that going on you sew it together and you stitch it and then you have a beautiful quilt Dawnstar is a really fun quilt to make it is going to require you to put the work in with your value and color understanding and you're just gonna have to keep playing play and play and play because when you look at this quilt it hombres the ombre ombre like let's get serious here the hombres are um ring so um it's really fun and it's it's a little more complex but if you stick to it you will get this effect with just nine fabrics if you're not using a full range on bray like if you're not using my sky collection and using other fabulous hombres on the market you might have to buy more than nine depending on the intensity of value change from the very lightest to the very darkest cutting all of your pieces out in advanced is something that I talk about in my book and that is something I highly recommend and then the other thing that you're gonna want to be conscious of is where you're going to put your accent blocks I definitely created accents in the quilt where your eye gravitates to and this is important to give the quilts like some bounce and some flash and some focus the one that one of the fabrics is just right here is this beautiful opal color and that was one of my favorites cut up you'll find that you are going to gravitate towards different hombres and so the ones that you gravitate towards cut more that up one of the key elements that I want to teach about the value and the color is that everything speaks differently to you than does to me or does to her or does to him so it's so personal and I want to give you the permission to focus on the colors you love the value range you love you might want this whole thing to be really really soft and you might not gravitate toward the really dark colors or you might want something moody so do what you like this is definitely not a copycat quilt but it's a copycat technique so once again I've got my favorite color wheel which I love to use and let's talk about the color in the dawn star quilt so I'm gonna put this back on because I tend not to use the super super brights and I like to get them out of my visual view and we don't have any greens in here so I'm gonna block away the greens and this is just to show you kind of how I come down to a color palette granted the the hombres themselves dictated what I was going to use but it's good for you to understand what we're using so we've got this range of Blues that goes into the purples we have a touch of pink so we're coming here with more the tints versus the tones we've got a lot of the purples and we don't have as many reds so if I were to block out some of these Reds right in here we don't we have a little bit of peach but not much but that's essentially that's essentially our palette right there and maybe not as much as this dark pink down here so that's a nice way to look at color and if you find that pleasing then those are the hombres that you want to pull together you could have 9 hombres that are completely different and then you might you know choose to do like the greens and the and the warm greens and you could go on that kind of palette I mean the world's our oyster you've color is fun and I encourage you to explore whatever you want to explore and speak through communicate through color this is the back of the quilt of the dawn star quilt and this shows you the hombres that I used so this is a nice thing to do as well make your back special get that extra yardage and show the pig show show your family show your friends tell your story I use these fabrics to get everything that's going on in the front I come up and I sold them back together and they look really different Sunset Lake is the final quilt I'm going to talk about in today's video and the value and the color change is equally important it's another way to do the work and to learn the key in this quilt is making the hombres really explode for you really making them work they're so beautiful that we kind of hate to cut them up sometimes and in this quilt you don't cut them up very small you're not doing small piecing so let's talk about this lay it out and take a look Sunset Lake has 16 hombres in it and if you look down here with me and at all the colors we are making these beautiful hombres do all the work and it's big scale piecing it's using my kite and large triangle from the octagon shimmer pattern and this is the fourth pattern in the series that uses those templates and the glory of this is that it's fun and it goes fast because you have such big piecing the keys in getting this Lake to be reflective and this feeling of water and sky is again working with your values so I've got my deep deep mmm like kind of mulberry and serese-- and these midnight blues and so these are dark values there's must be mmm easily like eight to ten value changes just in the water but see how I add a little sparkle like a reflection in that green there and then when you come to your strong line in the horizon that is key to separate water from sky and the very lightest palest part of the sky has still some deeper values in it but not a lot and as you Cass Kade down through the atmosphere you get the glowing sunset popping in these orange colors and the other key point that I want to that I want to talk to you about is adding these pale Pink's see how these are really high con to the watercolor these give you that kind of Sun in the dabbling light reflecting off the water this also requires work you will cut out more than you need and you will be playing with each block so when you go into the book and you read through the directions read them twice take your time and have a blast with it and again change colors if you want do a similar color palette if you want just have fun you can use any of these colors any colors you want to do a sunset lake look you could do them in your greens you can do them in yellows the key is have these beautiful hombres work for you you don't have to cut them in up into small pieces and put them back together use big bold strokes have fun with it and I hope they liked your hombre fire so let's talk about storing your fabrics storing your ombre fabrics they're gonna be different on how you keep them in your stash I have a beautiful pile of my Umbra half yard cuts and they look like this and why they look like this is because I fold them differently then I fold my other fabrics this is so I can see what each ombre is how do I do this you asked so you're coming from the store you've bought a half piece a half yard piece of ombre and the way they're gonna fold it up is probably something like this and it looks kind of browny purplish but you know there's a lot of cool stuff going on there and you don't want to put it in your stash not knowing all the cool stuff going on so let's unfold it ooh look how pretty it is look at that all this stuff going on and we're gonna fold it so that you can see what's going on so we take the middle and we're doing selvage to selvage and you're folding it in half and then you're gonna fold it but instead of going all the way down you're gonna stop to let this little bit of yellow peekaboo through and then you're going to fold it again revealing the darker purple and then you can fold it and when you do this with all the hombres that you buy you want to stack them I know this might not be for everyone it is a little bit fastidious but it shows you what you're having your stash and working with your paint colors you know as an artist or your fabrics as a quilt artist you need to see what you have so when you fold them like this obviously you have more bulk here than you do here so the way I keep them in my shelf is I go bulk on this side bulk on that side bulk on this side welcome that side so I have folded all my half yard cuts so that I can see what I have so when I go to make and sew and cut with them it's really clear what's in my stash I just want to leave with a message that if you want to stay just enjoying color and not doing too much delving in about value and color that's fine because these fabrics will cut up and they'll work for you they will do the work because all that color has been done for you on a yard of fabric if you do want to get more into color into value do the work and studying there is a spread in the book about value and about color that you'll learn more and you can go as deep as you want and I just really my my hope for you is to have a blast and to just have other people enjoy the fun and join me on this great adventure of embrace so that's it for today's video I hope you learned a lot about embrace I hope you understand what a ombre is and the beautiful color that they can bring into your studio or into your quilting life I've got 30 fabrics that are available at your favorite quilt shop you can find the ombre quilts book at CT pub comm or also at your favorite quilt shop and if you have any questions please put them in the in the content below I do read them I do look at them and I love connecting with all you people out there who also love to quilt and work with color give me a thumbs up if you liked the video be sure to subscribe to see and T's YouTube channel below and stay creative thanks for stopping by hey them to dong what's the you

Channel: Jennifer Sampou

Views: 886

Rating: 4.9298244 out of 5

Keywords: Fabric Design, Quilt Design, Color, Free Quilting Tutorials, Quilt Patterns, Sew, Sewing, Sewing Patterns, Free, Elephant and I, Shimmer, Ombre Quilts, Ombre fabric, octagon shimmer, kona cotton, kona, robert kaufman fabric, stash books, C&T publishing, missouri star quilts, craftsy, quilt fabric, whale & i, Dawn Star, Yellow Bars

Id: SpBA8V1burk

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019