McCall's Quilting August 2005 issue.

A Study of Yellow by Pat Sloan Yellow has been a favorite color of mine since I was a little girl; I always wanted a yellow bedroom! But many people when asked if they like yellow will say, "No!" This is SO sad… and more so if you are a quilter. Yellow in a quilt, used a tiny bit, or used in big chunks, will make your quilt sing.

It might be that the word yellow in the generic sense makes you think of screaming bright, crayon box yellow. When I think of yellow, I think of millions of shades, from the palest butter cream to deep butterscotch and harvest golds, with lots of shades in between. Look at the photo of the group of yellow fabrics; the range is wide on what I consider yellow.

Yellow is in many of the fabrics on your shelf already! Look at the photo of the fabrics with yellow. It might be just a tiny bit, but yellow is there in the prints because it brings life to the design. Take a look at the fabrics you own. Look for prints that contain some yellow. I'll bet you have a few already.

Color studies are a wonderful way to play with your fabric and learn about color. Find a simple block to use. I use my favorite, a churn dash. Keep the block simple because you don't want to worry about doing complicated piecing. Now take two yellow fabrics and make a churn dash block. Then make a few more. Do some with high contrast and some with low contrast. See how the fabric looks and changes. Now take a yellow fabric and another color. Make up a few more blocks to see how yellow works with other colors in a block. "Prairie Flowers" was inspired by a flower block in an antique quilt I saw. I used navy tone-on-tone fabrics for the background. After the blocks were made I searched out and auditioned several yellow fabrics for the setting. I found one that worked best with the yellow flowers and the border fabric. Did I ever get that yellow bedroom? Right now my bedroom is painted pumpkin orange (a shade of yellow)… and my hallway? It’s that screaming bright, crayon box yellow… really!