An Artists Palette

An artist develops her (I will use the feminine pronoun in this piece not to be exclusive, but to be brief) palette by mixing colors. She uses the paint either sparingly or liberaly to create the exact boldness or subtlty that
the creation dictates. A little touch of red, a smudge of blue, dull it with some black or ochre, and you get the look that you want.

A fiber artist has a more challenging road to develop palette. For one thing, she cannot (or most do not) create her own fabric colors. She relies on retailers to sell the fabric that meets her needs. For most fiber creations, getting something in the correct color range is adequate to creating as she wants. I think this works well for clothing. Quilters get much more particular when they are creating their quilts. If one goes into any store that caters to quilters, you will see quadruple the amount of fabric to choose from, because quilters use color matching as their key to what they purchase.

So in creating my Joseph coat of many colors, I needed to have a broad palette! Here is some of it as raw materials.



Creating the coat has been a challenge, because sometimes concepts and actual fabric choices are elusive in putting them together. One of my palette days required 100 miles of travel to 7 different fabric stores to complete the quest for just the right fabric. Last summer, I had a concept for Oklahoma. I wanted purple gingham for the dress for Laurey, and a sheer purple gingham for Dream Laurey's dress. I was so lucky, because as soon as I walked into the fabric store 1 mile from my house, there my fabrics were, right on the first table! This year, I've had to travel far and wide to put together my palette.

And then there is the expense of the palette. What if it doesn't work out? Then someone is out the money for the purchase of the fabric that doesn't turn out to work. This last palette choice was like that, it cost me $80 to purchase what I needed. I sure hope this one works out. Here is the concept.

I made the basic coat part last week, and have been conceptualizing (mostly at night when I'm trying to get to sleep) what the rest of the coat will look like. I purchased the lame pieces this week, mainly because they had all the colors together on one table (not on sale, darn it!) I'm going to make this concept somehow work. I'll show you the results when it gets finished.