It would be nice if color were formulaic. Unfortunately it’s just not. Color is complicated, and thread color is even more so. How do we pick thread colors to create a flower shade? And what do we do if we want to create white?

White has it’s own complications. It’s a flashlight on a quilt. If you put on real white it’s intense. It blinds you to darker details. So often bright white is just too much.

It’s also boring. It needs shading and definition. Flat white is, well, flat.

I wanted some white clematis for a quilt.

The first question that I ask is what color is my light, How do I know what color my light is? My light is the color of my fabric. In this case my fabric is full of blue light. So my light is blue. I then imagine my flowers dusted with blue light.

I chose to use metallics for this because of their translucency. The sheers will also be translucent which adds to the feeling of them being flower petals. That being said, I decided white, silver, and grey threads white just for contrast. But if I were going to add a color for shading, blue was a good bet. The gold and purple gold were contrasts for the center swirls. And there is always room for lime green. It adds excitement without having a high color impact.

My other secret weapon I used was sheers. There are at least a dozen sheers I cut into petal shapes and fused on to blue felt, with tear away stabilizer behind it. The difference in the sheers make differences in each petal.

Using a different thread on each side of the petal creates shadows. Putting a crease through the petal in green and gold increases the illusion.

Here is the bank of them embroidered on the felt.

Here they are cut way. White is only one of the dozen threads I used, but my flowers are still white .

Here they are cut out on the background. There will be leaves and moths, but its a start.

So when you are thinking about thread colors, think about your light. Go both lighter and darker in your thread color for shadows and highlights. And if all fails, add lime green.