This is the Summer of Analogous Colors! The Proper Bostonian Quilter's guild's Summer Challenge is to make a quilt (or just a one block slab) using 3-5 analogous colors on the color wheels. (Analogous colors are right next to each other on the color wheel, holding hands as it were). Using shades (the color plus black) and tints (the color plus white) are allowed but even so, sticking to just these 3-5 colors is a lot harder to do than it sounds. The brain really wants to add an accent color!

It was my job to present this year's Summer Challenge so I had to make up some blocks to see if this was even feasible!

Above are blocks with just 3 analogous colors--the most limiting, and therefore, the hardest to do. The colors are Blue Green, Green and Yellow Green. The yellow green grated on my nerves initially. But by the time I'd made about 5 blocks, I was able to let the yellow green have center stage instead of a tiny role in the background!

Here is another example using Yellow, Yellow Orange, Orange and Red Orange, 4 analogous colors. This combination was a lot easier. Probably because these are the colors of citrus fruits which we see together all the time!

More analogous color studies will appear intermittently this summer! Give this a try! It's a lot of fun.