Hey - no colour police either !?

If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know that one of my main preoccupations with quilt making is working with colour. I don't feel very confident about colour choices and combinations. In the last week or so I have been working a little bit more on this quilt.

But I've really struggled as I have tried to combine brights from several palettes and have felt that I have lost my way with this design. Interestingly as I have lost confidence in the colour choices my sewing has become really slapdash and several of the pinwheels are poorly matched. I had decided to give up and put what I have done on one side and continue with something where colour choice is not such an issue - but then I went to Keukenhof - the Dutch tulip and bulb gardens and the colours here - and my reflections on them have persuaded me to give it another go.

Two things struck me at Keukenhof - firstly ( and this is not the first time I have thought this) is that pretty much any combination in nature looks good. Think purple and yellow pansies - a combination which I usually hate but love in these flowers.

If this isn't in your face colour wise I don't know what is - but it's good isn't it? And the second thing was how very defined my favourite colour palettes are. In the first picture the top left pinwheel is all my favourite colours. At Keukenhof these were my perfect combinations below

Here

and here

But in quilt making I want to actively break out of these constraints to be confident in different palettes like this .....

Or even this?

Yikes - now this is some combination - but I kind of like it.

So I guess I am going to persevere with my colour pinwheel. I think cause I was never very arty I feel like I may get it WRONG. But of course just as there are no quilt police, there are no colour police either. And if I hate it I will certainly learn from it. If nothing else it will be a liberating experience - well that's what I am telling myself!