Piet would be so proud!

For the past couple of years I've been associated with StudioE Fabrics, the independent stores' niche in the Jaftex Company. Other Jaftex holdings include  Blank Quilting, Henry Glass, and A.E. Nathan among others.

The line of shot cottons we designed called Peppered Cottons has sold well for the company. Explaining just a bit here: 'shot' means that the warp (lengthwise threads on the loom) are one color while the weft (the thread carried from side-to-side by the shuttle) is another. The blending of two colors can produce fabrics that are either subtle or occasionally startling.

If the colors in a woven shot cotton are related, such as royal blue plus turquoise, when woven together they create an intense medium blue. The new shade coordinates with both true blue prints and all the aquas and turquoise-related colors.








Sometimes the blending of colors creates shades that are quite delicious and rare. Seen here: Grellow (yellow woven with grey) that shows as a light strange off-shade of green.

Or Morning Glory, a purple plus blue blend.






But sometimes a quiltmaker hungers for a pure color, an intense and strong shade, and it's difficult to achieve that effect in a true shot (bi-color) weave. Red, in particular, is a color people love. When they want a real red in a quilt, they don't mean Cherry Red or Burgundy Red. They mean RED. Sometimes only a pure color will do. Enter yarn-dyed true colors. Yarn-dyed  means that the fabric is not first woven and then dyed red (the usual steps in solid color production). Rather the very threads, before being even warped on the loom, are dyed red. The red dye deeply permeates the very fibers of
the fabrics and, when woven with the same red in the warp and weft, the process produces an intense color.

While formerly Flame was our only true color in the Peppered Cottons lineup, at this Spring Quilt Market, we're introducing twelve new colors and four of them are true shades.

Meet Deep Space, a black that's blacker-than-black and its opposite--White Sugar. Sorry that the white looks like a hole in the blog--it's just super-white! And adding to the basic color wheel here's True Royal and Buttercup, a truly happy strong yellow. Then I realized those true colors are the palette of many of Piet Mondrian's masterpieces.

Deep Space

                                                                                                   

Flame

                                                                                             
   

White Sugar

 

Buttercup

True Royal

                 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Composition in red, blue, and yellow (1930) by Piet Mondrian.

So if you've been wanting to do a Mondrian tribute quilt, we've got your colors!