Book Review: Color Play

I recently picked up a copy of the color theory book, Color Play, written by Joen Wolfrom, and am very impressed. I have her Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool (C&T Publishing), and have found numerous uses for it. I love having it with me at the quilt shop, and use it in the sewing room all the time. I also find it extremely helpful in helping my 13 year old daughter choose fabrics and colors for her quilts. It’s very user-friendly. My daughter will often use it without being prompted and I can see it gets her thinking and pondering color.

[back to the book review 😉 ]I highly recommend Color Play to anyone who is interested in learning more about color theory or interested in learning how colors interplay with one another. It is also very user-friendly.

The first 2 chapters discuss color concepts, such as value and intensity, tints and shades. She then devotes much of the book to illustrating how nature can be a guide in choosing colors for quilts and explaining how to use color theory to choose fabrics or color themes. Her explanations are clear and is great at helping the reader to use those concepts together. Her photos are gorgeous and help to demonstrate the concept of finding inspiration in nature, as well as understanding how to use color interplay to give your quilts the “wow” factor.

The book is written in a very simple, straight forward manner, and is loaded with gorgeous photos of nature and quilts, of course. [After all, it’s a color theory book for quilters.]

It’s organized in such a way, that this book makes understanding color theory really easy. It takes each color and expands on how to use it in monochromatic, complimentary, split-complimentary, and triadic theme, using both fabric swatches and completed quilts.

This is possibly the only color theory book that you’ll need if you are looking for some help choosing colors for quilts and don’t want to be overwhelmed with too much color theory talk, which is completely appropriate for artists and painters, etc. As for me, this is all I need. Wolfrom provides lots of information in a clear, concise manner, which makes this book, Color Play, a great place to start, and quite possibly, all one would need to understand and use color theory successfully for quilting.