Fun with Colour Wheels

My local quilt guild is lucky enough to have a wonderful quilter who designs a mystery quilt project for us each year for the last few years.  I have decided to join in on this year's mystery, but to challenge myself to use the colour wheel theory to help me with colour choices. 

I am working with split complementary colours (which I'll reveal in my next post).  By using colour theory, I've assembled a palette of colours that I never would have put together before myself.  The fun I've had with colour wheel is something I've even been asked to share with one additional quilters guild as well as my local one.

I like to use three websites to help me with colour theory:

The first is a paint site - Dulux paints (Dulux Colour Wheel - This is Dulux's Australia site, but I prefer it over the Canadian version for this topic).   In it, they introduce some basic colour theory with descriptions of Monochromatic, Complementary, Split Complementary, Contrasting and Triadic descriptions and why you might want to consider one over the other.  If you have never worked with colour theory, this is a good place to start.

The better site (but warning, you can spend time on it) is the Canva colour wheel.

With the Canva site, you don't need an account in order to use the colour wheel.  Select your first colour by moving the larger white circle to somewhere on the colour wheel, and then select from the drop-down menu as to which combination you would like.  You can also use the small white circle on the outer ring of the large colour wheel to be able to select the exact shade and tone.

Now if you really want to get inspired with different combinations of colours, one place to look is Design-Seeds.com.  While Design-Seeds site provides inspiration primarily aimed at decorating projects, they all put swatches of colours together that you might not have thought of before and give you some inspiration in your colour selections. 

I would love to hear about your colour choices - both actual choices and what references do you use to pick your colours and stretch your creative boundaries. I hope you check these links and get inspired to try something new.