My apologies for a quiet blog for the last little while. Life has been busy with kids' swimming carnivals, a school fete, some work days here and there, and trips to the farm. There has regretfully been no sewing time, but mercifully, some thinking time!

I have been thinking about colour. It all started here, with this Anna Maria Horner 'Good Folks' print purchased recently. I noticed an astonishing FIFTEEN colour dots on the selvedge. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this means fifteen different screens for a single print - wow! No wonder this fabric packs a punch!

I love to use the colours of selvedge dots to inspire colour schemes for quilting or stitchery designs.

Another source of colour inspiration is

Color Collective

. Lauren Willhite has compiled this wonderful resource by using the works of artists, designers and photographers to inspire imaginative,

often unusual but always

beautiful palettes of colour. Any day that you are stuck for a new colour combination, you are bound to find something to enliven your senses at this site.

image source

You can waste a whole lot of time over at

Kuler

, where there are endless colour schemes to fire your imagination. Under the

'create' tab

, you can upload your own photographs and Kuler will generate colour palettes to match. You can even choose a 'mood' for your palette from colourful, bright, muted, deep or dark.

For colour advice, specific to quilters, there are some great posts written by bloggers to refer to. My first port of call would be the queen of colour herself, Rita at Red Pepper Quilts. Rita has written a wonderful post called

Colour in quilting

in which she advises to take time to notice colour in the everyday.

Jeni, at

In Color Order

, is writing a brilliant series of posts called

The Art of Choosing

which deals with fabric and colour. She has lots of great advice about choosing and organising fabric, based around principles of colour. Pop over to Jeni's and feast your eyes!

And just for fun, here's what happens when colour, a bookshelf and someone with a whole lot of time collide!

Imagine doing this with your fabric stash - how fun! Have a great week,

Bloom x