PRINT MIXING

Gain confidence in mixing prints so you can feel at ease when you’re piecing a project with various fabrics from your stash. You may be mixing prints from different collections, different designers or you may have prints in various different colours. The main aim is always to achieve some contrast within the pattern; we also want the colours to complement each other. Paula has made simple sixteen square patches with a checkerboard look to illustrate how the two different methods offer that contrast.

HOW TO MIX PRINTS COLOUR GROUPING

Colour can be divided in

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many ways. You can have complementary colours – for example, colours like red and orange, which are next to each other on the colour wheel. You can also have contrasting colours, which are colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel, such as red and green (Fig 1).

One of the simplest ways of

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dividing colours is to think of warm colours and cool colours (Fig 2). Warm colours are pink, red, orange and yellow. Cool colours are green, blue, turquoise and purple.

Grouping fabrics by colour, rather 3

than the printed pattern, allows you to easily mix and match prints which are from different collections but all share a colour.

Complementary colours have 4 a low contrast as they are similar to each other, but they result in a subtle yet still defined checkerboard, as shown in Fig A. Using opposite colours on the colour wheel results in high contrast, and it looks aesthetically pleasing too (Fig B).

Using warm and cool colour groupings 5

gives a moderate contrast, but this kind of grouping is especially beneficial when you are mixing together a lot of different colours, as shown in Fig C. This kind of grouping also works well with print fabrics that may have a mixture of colours within the same cool or warm range.

VOLUME

The second main way of mixing

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colours is to think about the volume of the print. By ‘volume’, what we really mean is the shade of the fabric, which can range from light to dark.

A great way to check the volume of a 7

fabric against another fabric is to take a photo of the fabrics together, and then convert the photo to black and white. Fig D shows fabrics in columns of dark, medium and light. Fig F shows the photo after it's been converted to black and white. When using this method, you should try to sort the fabrics first, then take the photo. Once you’ve viewed the black and white result, you may want to move fabrics around, and take another photo to check you’re happy with your groupings.

Using a light and dark pairing gives the 8

highest contrast, and the checkerboard will be very well defined (Fig F). Using a medium and light pairing (Fig G) or a medium and dark pairing (Fig H) gives moderate contrast. However, using a white for light fabrics or black for dark fabrics increases the contrast when they are paired with medium fabrics.

If you’re still unsure about how to print 9

mix with confidence, try using fabrics that are all from the same collection. The colours will already be complementary with each other, so you can easily practise balancing the different contrasts.