Grand Illusion Color Scheme

I am still pondering away on how to perfect my color scheme for the Grand Illusion mystery quilt.

After getting some initial feedback from my last post, it was clear that at the very least, the greens I had picked were totally wrong. At the least, those will need to change. I decided to start with one color and build from there.

The teals are definitely staying, because I bought a ton of yardage in this shade, specifically for this quilt. I feel like I've done  good job sticking with the color card.

Next I added back in the yellow. I think the yellow and the teal play off each other well.

Next, the pinks. I ditched a lot of the much darker pinks to get back to the color card.

As you can see, the pinks are just a bit too...pink. They need a bit more salmon/coral in them.

Here are all three colors together.

It's ok, but a little too saccharine. But check out how it changes when I slightly swap out the shade of pink:

Much better! The salmon-y shade gives it a little more grit. But here we reach an impass, because as you see, these three colors form a triad.

The above shot is from one of my most well-used books, "Color Play," by Joen Wolfrom. Who by the way has a class on craftsy about color, which I just might have to try. 

So the problem here is we have a trio of colors that go well together, but we need FOUR colors. You can't just toss a fourth color into a triadic color scheme!

Nevertheless, I tried to find the perfect fourth. How about purple? I have seen online that many are choosing to swap out purple for green. This color scheme does not do it for me. It's still too sickly sweet.

How about swapping that yellow for a pale lime?

I definitely prefer this one. What if I go with an even darker lime?

Maybe? I'm not sure how I feel about it. What's funny is I originally rejected those limes but if you swap out the purple for the yellow...

...we are back to Bonnie's original color scheme! Which looks much better now that I have corrected the hues of the pink and green. However, one reason I am hesitant to stick with this color scheme is that it is suspiciously close to the colors that I used for Bonnie's mystery last year!

Here are last year's colors:

I certainly don't need two quilts in the same shades, and for that reason alone I want to mix things up. 

While visiting my local quilt shop last week, I bought a fat quarter bundle from a lovely line called "geofabulous." I noticed that the teal, pink, and green all matched the colors Bonnie had chosen, so I wondered if I could get inspiration from the line. The other primary shade used in that line is a navy blue. Below are four fabrics from the line.

And then when ironing today, I realized that my ironing board cover uses the same color scheme!

Hmmm...think there's something to this?

I tried out the navy FQ with my other colors:

I like that the navy tones down all the super bright and intense shades of the others. However, I am very hesitant to use this color scheme. Last year I accidentally messed up my colors and ended up using pink where Bonnie used yellow. If you look at her quilt, the yellows and whites blend together to form diamonds. If you look at mine (below), that diamond shape is muddied.

For that reason, I am hesitant to swap out a very bright shade like yellow for a very dark shade like navy. I think it could ruin the effect that Bonnie has in mind for her quilt, especially with a name like "Grand Illusion," I bet there are some secondary patterns that will appear in the design.

So we are still up in the air on the colors. At least I have corrected my hues for green and pink. What remains is to find a scheme that is pretty, not too different from Bonnie's, but also not too similar to what I did last year. Tough!