Grey Matters

It was inevitable that once we got around to ‘A Cuppa Tea in the Woods’ that a Canada Jay would show up. Our designs often start with memories and stories; our love of this place and its culture and traditions. The way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. Didn’t take long for us to go from Jam Jams to Jays when we were remembering ‘boil ups’. 

Canada Jays are winged greyscales. Little surprise that they are so at home in the boreal forest. Northern light is low, the shade and shadows long and grey, picking up the browns and greens in the woods. Canada Jays make up for any leaning toward drabness with oversized personalities and boldness. We needed to find a way to create a grey project palette that stayed intriguing.

While a project can begin with many ideas, we try to limit our starting palette. Three colours can be enough but a base palette often ends up being around five. In our latest project, Spiced Grey, the palette is built primarily around a base of neutrals: greys inspired by jays. It’s easy to think of greys as lighter forms of black but greys are actually more like modified whites.  Neutral greys contain colours, not just black. The mix of colour in a grey will determine how warm or cool it is. 

A palette of several values of one grey would be pretty gloomy. Mixing blue-greys, brown-greys and more neutral greys is, to our eyes at least, more elegant. As versatile and remarkable as greys are, greys alone need something to lift them out of the fog. The whitest and darkest plumage on a Canada Jay adds contrast within their neutrality. The palette still needed some added heat to balance the cool. Red likes some shoulder space and the abundant greys here gave it the room needed. Red Osier Dogwood, with its festive crimson branches added just the fiery vibe we were looking for. Spiced Grey, the palette, became the project

You can make Spiced Grey as fusible appliqué or as the base for a fabric collage. Make two copies of the templates and try both approaches. This is not an image that needs to be collaged over the entire surface, a little collaging on the bird and branches to pull colour through and add some contrast is all you need do. This is a good project to start with if you haven’t tried collage before. The pattern and templates are available for free (click here) so you can play around with this palette on your own. If you do, be sure to share the results with us on our social media. Try it over the holidays and help us add some spice to the season. Happy Christmas and happy sewing everyone!