Personalized Fair Isle

I'm taking a class from Janine Bajus at Churchmouse Yarn and Tea on Bainbridge Island called Personalized Fair Isle - Choosing the Colors you Love.

Our first session was two weeks ago and we have a follow up session this afternoon.

This class is to help you choose the colors you love and apply them to either an existing design or your own design based on a color inspiration. Your color inspiration could be a painting, a photo, etc.

Here Janine is showing her Acorn Sweater(?) with her inspiration for the color. This was an interesting case because if you look closely at the photo - she has one row of the pop color and it is a very bright green. Your eye/brain does not detect it right away(not even in person). It was interesting to see her other swatches for the pop color because how it looks really is dependand on how it plays with the colors it is paired with. This is the challenge of design!

When it comes to designing with color....well that big ugly thing called "lack of self confidence" comes out like a BIG DOG!

Honestly now. I go into the class full of self doubt, nerves and thoughts like "I'm not good at this". "I can't do this". Life is like that.

You have a fear. You can either go towards it or you run away from it. I'm more the type to go towards it because life is much more fulfilling if you tackle your fears.

Janine is the right person to take a color class from. You know what that day felt like? Well it was draining because I was working with my fear(which takes a lot of energy). Then things opened up. I felt like Janine was the person that came to my prison cell(of sorts) with a key to release me from my self imposed color prison.

My approach to playing with color completely changed by the end of the day. Oh! The possibilities!!! Wow.

I love her approach to color. Yes there are "rules". Her approach is more of a playful way to navigate this huge subject. She filtered the concepts to maneageable guidelines. A person can get overwhelmed with rules but this is about fun!

I'm a rule follower(because it is safe) . I just need the nudge to say it is ok to get outside the box. It is ok to develop your own sense of color.

I learned another valuable lesson - you just need to open your eyes to color. When you look outside, at a painting, a photograph you see color. Really look at the colors. What nuances do you see? Yes, it may look the main colors in a painting are blue, red, gold, yellow. But if you were to try to describe the painting..how would you describe it? (To me this is like taking the time to smell the roses)

This is my first swatch. I chose a very difficult design for my first attempt. This is Luskentyre from Alice Starmore's A Scottish Collection. I have always been drawn to this design but the colors she chose were just too yellow for me. To to Marina's finished items for 2006 and scroll down to Luskentyre to see how Starmore conceived this design.

Keep in mind this is my FIRST attempt. More versions to follow!

I gotta run to get to class...

One more photo. How cute is this? This is from a latte' at Trophy Cupcake.

Enjoy your Sunday!