The Ives Color Wheel and the Colors in Your Quilt
from Quilting Teacher and Color Expert, Joen Wolfrom

In your book Color Play, you introduce the Ives Color Wheel, which is based on pure colors from nature.

I stumbled on those colors when I learned to dye fabric. How did you discover that color wheel and its application to fabric?

Joen: I stumbled on it, too. Early in my quilting life, I had a friend who was a boutique artist. She was an artist, and she also was a boutiquer. She suggested I take a basic paint color class from a woman who was teaching this class at a local community college in Tacoma, which is the closest city to me.

The teacher's name was Susanne Jelan. She actually was a textile artist. I don't know if you know who Jen Myer is, but she and Jen Myer did graduate work together. She did a lot of quilts like Jen Myer's. She obviously used this color wheel.

I did take the class, and it was a quarter of eye-opening painting. Her quilts were just stunning. She dyed all of her own fabrics and she used this color wheel. I could see where it really made sense. It was a color wheel of light. It's what nature is all about.

I don't know where that other color wheel came from. When you look at the commercial color wheel that we see so often in stores, it's not even true. They show that you combine yellow with red or red with blue, but if you combined them in paint, you wouldn't get those colors. It's a fallacy.

If you used the 24-step color wheel we grew up with, with red, yellow and blue for your complements, you're two steps off. That doesn't make an ugly quilt, but you could use the right color wheel and it would be stunning rather than okay.

It was an accident for me. I use this color wheel in all my books. I can't tell you how many people who are really knowledgeable in color say, "I am so glad you use the correct color wheel."

It drove me crazy when I was doing research on The Magical Effects of Color book that so many actual color books used yellow, red and blue. I wondered, "Do they think we don't know that word magenta or the word cyan or turquoise?" It was amazing.

If a person who's listening hasn't converted, do so. You'll just find it so much better for you and for your quilts. It's the color wheel for printmaking, photography and science. This is the color wheel CMYK is based on. The Kodak color strip is based on this. The fabrics are dyed with this color wheel. It's really smart to change over if you haven't changed yet.

Peggy: It took a lot of the frustration out of fabric buying for me just to be able to understand that's what that is. For everybody who is listening, there is an article on my website about the Ives Color Wheel. It has pictures of it and describes it, so you can check that out if you haven't seen it before.

Joen: You cannot find anything commercially on the Ives Color Wheel. I have it in my book and I have it in the Color Tool. You can't go to the store and say, "Can I purchase one?" Ives was an inventor in photography, and it was named after him. No one really knows the name of it. Oftentimes it's just called the Color Wheel of Light. They use that term scientifically.

Happy Quilting!

Penny is the author of more than 9 books on quilting and a quilter of more than 26 years who seeks to interest new quilters and provide them with the resources necessary to create beautiful quilts.

www.TheQuiltingCoach.com
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©2007, Penny Halgren

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