From Janet Wickell,
Your Guide to Quilting.
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Using a Color Wheel

Forget about all the "rules" you've heard about colors that do and do not "match," because you can make any color work with any other color by playing with different versions of it. That's where a color wheel comes in handy. Forget about the idea that a color wheel makes color decisions for us -- wrong! But it does help us understand the relationship between colors, and that makes fabric selection a lot easier.

Let's get familiar with some of the terms you'll hear when you use a color wheel.

Primary Colors

Blue, red and yellow are called primary colors because they are the basis for other colors. Mix them together in different ways and you can create every other color on the color wheel. The three primary colors are arranged at equal distances from each other on the most commonly used color wheel, shown above.

Secondary Colors

The three secondary colors on a color wheel are located midway between the primary colors. They are created by mixing together equal amounts of the primary colors on either side of them.

• Green, equal parts of blue and yellow
• Orange, equal parts of yellow and red
• Violet, equal parts of blue and red