I am a color person. I like bright colors, and lots of 'em.
However through my career as a fabric purveyor, I've been reminded over and over that there are many of you who love neutrals.
When we first started our business in the basement of our home, my shelves were filled with lots of boisterous juicy bold color.
A quilter friend came over to see our new business. She quietly walked through and looked at every single bolt. Then she said good-bye, and said there was nothing that she wanted. I was shocked! How was that possible?
"You don't have any neutrals."
"You want…. beige and gray?"
"Yes. Those colors are soothing to me."
"Okay, come back in two weeks and I'll have what you need."
Two weeks later she came back, and I had a whole selection of beautiful earthtones and neutrals. She bought an armful.
The first time I went to the Tokyo Quilt Festival, I had another Neutral Epiphany. I had seen Yoko Saito's taupe quilt while visiting a quilt shop in Florence Italy, and although that was a revelation, it was only one quilt.
In Tokyo, there was a huge quilt exhibit with LOTS of taupe quilts. The excitement was not in the color, but in the exquisitely detailed handwork of these quilts.
The Taupe Movement is slowly but surely seeping into our color context here in the US. Life is so crazy and complicated, that we are drawn to the soothing qualities of these lovely understated fabrics.
Handwork is also growing in popularity, as many quilters seek out the meditative and mind-emptying therapeutic qualities of making something beautiful with one's own hands.
Here is a tessellated quilt from the Tokyo Quilt Festival (background), with a collage of our Taupe cotton prints (Gentle Flowers) mixed with Natural-colored linens.
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