Whip Lash

I decided to be brave this week and actually join in with Whip Lash for once. I've never been much of a joiner, and I've never won anything in my life, but this weeks theme of 'Colour' was just too tempting to resist.

Obviously as a quilter, colour is incredibly important to me, but I have to admit that it's really only been recently that I've started using really vibrant colours in my work. And it's only been in the last few months that I've started using pattern in any way. I'm the opposite of most quilters - I started making quilts using only solids and absolutely, catorgorically avoided any kind of patterned fabric.

It wasn't until I saw some Amy Butler fabric at last years Quilt Festival here in the UK, that I realised that all printed fabrics didn't have to have either brightly coloured cats or dark and dingy flowers on them. And once I started blogging and discovered the wonderful Cia , there really was no stopping me! It's prints all the way now. In fact I have to remember to occasionally use a solid these days and my fabric cupboard has gone from having all three shelves holding solids, with one box of prints, to having a whole new, larger cupboard that holds nothing but prints!

I'm still generally a little cautious about using really bright colours though, (although my recent work doesn't seem to reflect that, and it would appear that I'm getting braver!), and couldn't really think of anything to make for the Whip Lash theme of 'Colour', until I started working on this quilt this morning (didn't have time to finish it last week).

And I realised just how much I've started loving orange. Even though the quilt is predominantly blue, when you're quilting you view the colours and the patterns they make from a whole new angle. And from close up the orange in the quilt just kept jumping out at me. So I had a look and discovered that I already own a ton of orange fabrics, which surprises me because it's not a colour I'm normally drawn to. Or so I thought.

So anyway, to finally get to the point - after picking a number of vintage and new orange and red prints, I came up with this cat. It's a pattern that I've made before, but it's a whole new take. And it totally sums up my changing attitudes to colour.

Unfortunately, the light today is truly awful, so I haven't been able to get a really decent photo. The wool collar isn't the purple that it appears - it's actually a lovely soft heather colour.

So there you go, my bright Colourful cat.

Arggh, the more I see these photo's the more I realise just how wrong they are! The collar just is NOT that colour! I know there are lots of people out there that love purpe and that's cool and I'm sure there are even people that would happily team it with orange. But I'm not really one of those people! In real life it just doesn't look like that, it's such a nice subtle colour. After Whiplash is over I may have to replace these photo's, because they. are. wrong! Oh and I don't have photoshop and wouldn't know what the hell to do with it if I did, so I can't just change the colour that way. - Ok I've replaced a couple of the photo's with some brighter ones.