Colour swatches on a piece of silk linen fabric

First of all, a great big thank you to all of you who placed orders for my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ yesterday!

I spent the morning emailing students to cancel all my November workshops due to the UK lockdown that starts on Thursday. My lovely students were all great and most have just moved their bookings to next year but I still felt incredibly sad as I look forward to having students in the studio so much. Seeing the orders come through for the book made the day easier. (As well as providing a much needed income!)

In this post I’m going to share a few pages from the book starting with the contents page. There is a lot in my book. I start by looking at traditional colour theory and colour practice when using dyes. I then take the reader through the creation of a series of colour references that not only illustrate the reality of working with dyes but also create a catalogue of hundreds of swatches of different colours each with the exact recipe needed to reproduce them.

Page 14 - Hue - one of the fundamental properties of colour

Page 41 - Scraping swatches of colour onto fabric

Page 63 - Looking at our colour references and what they tell us about our base colours

After step-by-step guides to creating colour references I include a section on how we might use them - to match individual colours, to create a range of colours based on one hue in a range of values (monochromatic), to create a range of colours in a similar value that are analogous and to create a range of colours that differ in both hue and value (colour families). Again, lots of step-by-step instructions and photos.

Page 125 - Different ways of mixing colour families

I then change tack and go back to colour theory, looking at traditional colour schemes and how our artistic styles might affect the types of palettes of colour that we develop for our work. I was honoured to be allowed to share examples from some great artists in this section - Charloote Ziebarth, Christine Seager, Diane Melms, Julie Bunter, Leslie Morgan and Uta Lenk - thank you! And, through a series of colour studies, I looked at how we might work with different types of sources of inspiration for colour.

Page 148 - Colour study based on photos of the beach at Dunure, Scotland

And finally, well nearly finally, I include a section giving instructions for some of the techniques I used to make the samples in the book. These are ‘tried and tested’ techniques that I’ve been using for years. There are a myriad of different ways to add colour to textile and some excellent books already out there. My book is more about the understanding and control of colour when using any one of those techniques.

Page 164 - Dyeing small pieces of fabric in a plastic bag (you can do this in containers if you don’t want to use bags!)

Page 176 - Simple screen printing technique using shredded paper on the fabric as a resist

Page 184 - Yes, I include a short section on breakdown printing!

And finally, I have included an extensive Appendix which is chock full of information about the science of colour, the dyes and other chemicals we use etc.

I recognise that the structure and content of my book is a little different. But in it, I share the sum of my knowledge to date with the hope that it inspires you to delve deeper into colour.

Stay well,

Leah x

Images and more details from 'Colour Your Palette'