Color inspirations

Color choices for quilt fabrics may be one of the most important decisions when designing a quilt. Color is probably the most important factor which will make a successful quilt, and can be used to convey many types of emotions, moods, or feelings. We may want to make a quilt which will be used with the color schemes for a particular room, and we can make our choices based on the other furnishings in that room. Often I will hesitate to make a quilt for someone if I haven't been to their home to see what they might like.
With all that being said, however, I find the greatest pleasure in just making whatever suits my fancy, using the colors which will give me the greatest pleasure. My very favorites are intense, color-saturated deep, bright colors. These kinds of colors can often be found in Amish quilts, and the Amish  are certainly amazing in some of the combinations they put together. One of the most important elements in a successful design comes with a good use of contrast. Contrast is the element of a quilt design which the human eye will first notice.Color becomes secondary, but without the use of contrast, many of the other design elements will be lost.
I was quite surprised a couple of years ago, when I purchased a DVD of Walt Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty, and watched it for the first time in many years. When I was a little girl, that was my Disney movie. Other girls would favor other heroines, such as Cinderella, Belle, or the Little Mermaid. My idol was Princess Aurora. What really amazed me when I watched the movie were the amazing colors, and how bright and vivid they were. Hey! Those are my colors! And that was when I realized what a huge influence that movie had on my color choices, without me even knowing it. Watch the movie sometime, if you can, and you will see what I mean.
Now I notice in nature those same intense colors; the rich blue of an October sky, the amazing hues of the crape myrtle when the leaves turn in the fall, and the brilliant green grass when it starts to come back in the spring.. It's all out there for us to see and from which we can take our inspirations.
You can also start to look around you and see where you get your color inspirations. Study the subject of color whenever you can, and you will find that you will have a better grasp of how to use it successfully.