About that fortunate accident of color

    I had so many great comments on my color choices for Walking in Sunshine.  Thank you all.  I answered many of you and said it was a fortunate accident when I switched to  the yellow rather than my original red choice.  It is so hard to select colors / fabrics for a mystery quilt.  I have been "burned" before.  
   I wrongly thought the purple was going to be the stand out star in this one, but by clue 3 or 4 I knew I had  been fooled.  It was the last color that was going to be in the spotlight,  for Bonnie's that was the lime green and that would have been red for me.     My gut instinct told me to find something else, pick another color that would not be in conflict with the purple.   That is why I went for the golden yellow, of which I had a good selection in my stash.
    A little while ago, I realized my fortunate accident had been resting / sleeping right before my eyes for a long time.  My desktop wallpaper is a favorite photo on a perfect Spring day!
The dark purple iris, the golden yellow for sunshine and flowers, the light blue for sky, and the turquoise and teals for the foliage.....exactly the colors I put into the quilt.

   I  am sure in a color class that I would be taught to break this all down, and analyze it as a split complement color scheme.  But all those words take away from the beauty of learning from what I see around me.    That's the heart of my quilting, I think.    Maybe finally, I am learning to trust my instinct!

   Insight:   Here are some questions to ask next time when looking for a color scheme.......
  What colors surround you?  What colors do you see when you walk outside?  What colors make you smile and feel good?  What color is your very favorite outfit that you select when you want to really feel good?

    I was asked about the border ...... I wanted the purple to stand out more in the center and to tone down the yellow just a bit, so the dark purple border does that.  If I had used the light blue (which is mixed with the black and white prints in the blocks) in the border, the overall pattern would have appeared to "float" on the light background.  Sometimes that is great, but in this case, I felt the busy block pattern needed to be stopped by the border.  The flying geese inserts are an easy cheat when joining the strips for the border.....and I didn't have to toss them into the scrap pile.
   There was some hooting and hollering going on here this morning, too.  Early comments sent me to check out the post at SewCalGal.     I won at the Giveaway Party......***big smile***   What a way to start the week!