Joyful - the colour chapter

There are very few books I have read and re-read (Pride & Prejudice, Earthsea Quartet, Hobbit and LOTR) so I was sure I would chose a scene from one of those.  The one that popped into my head was Mr. Darcy proposing to Lizzie telling her how "ardently I admire and love you" while insulting her family and social position at the same time.  That scene always gets to me.

In the end though, I went with a non-fiction book called "Joyful: The surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness" by  Ingrid Fettell Lee.  In the chapter on colour the writer talks about an organisation called Publicolor who change the feel of public schools with a colour palette of vibrant happy colours and the effect has been increased attendance at the schools by both students and teachers and an environment that felt safer for all using the school.

As a quilter I am colour obsessed and my colour palette tends towards saturated, bright and vibrant so this was the perfect thing for me to try and capture in quilt form.  I found an image from a google search of publicolor where they had even painted the schoolyard and used that as a basis for a design. 

I created a template for foundation paper piecing and was a bit nervous of all those tiny lines converging but well sometimes you have to be brave and just give it a go! I made it in two parts and hoped the lines would match up- they do mostly and the piece wasn't too bulky when quilting it.  The quilting was bricks and pebbles in the background fabric and the final touch was to put it in a frame.

Glowing in the afternoon sun!

I made the piece A3 but had a smaller frame so cropped the piece and am sorry I did now as I liked the white at either sides of the blue in the original design.  For the frame I imagined a skinny black frame but didn't have one so this natural wood effect was all I had to use and framed this way the colours remind me of trees!