August 2009 – Tints, the Fragile Hues of Spring
Colors to use: Pale Blues and Turquoise
They are often referred to as pastels, with names like celery green, robin's egg blue, or apricot cream. The tint scale of color choices appear gauzy and soft. Tints are created by combining a pure color with white. All tints are lighter than their pure color and most give the feeling of a fragile delicate flower. If you use mostly tints in your quilt your design may have the feeling of spring or freshness, or rebirth. That is why so many of us choose the tints to create crib quilts for those special little people in our lives. A light color, such as yellow, has few tint variations because it does not take very many steps to move from white to pure yellow; but, a color such as violet, has many tints, because it takes many more steps to move from white to the pure color. Though the tints are not as brilliant as the pure colors they are what many of call "background" colors, and make our more vibrant color choices surge forward. We will be creating our block this month from tints of blues and greens that are on the turquoise side of the color wheel. This should be a very pretty block.
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