quiltology...

I just discovered a wonderful bookstore here in town that’s practically in my own backyard.

Open Books, in the River North neighborhood (213 W Institute) is located right behind the Paper Source at Chicago and Franklin (which btw happens to be a convenient stop on the Brown line.) 

More than just a bookstore, Open Books is a nonprofit organization that combines a big time book donation program with a retail bookstore, e-commerce site and small army of volunteers who help support local literacy programs. 

They say that when books fall open, we fall into them.  And this is a great place to fall into, noodle around and indulge your reader’s wanderlust while supporting a really great idea. 

In fact I found a couple of wonderful reference books on color, complete with thousands of new and exciting color combinations that fabric junkies everywhere are sure to appreciate. 

The PANTONE Guide to Communicating with Color by color expert Leatrice Eiseman is filled with lots of color inspiration and factoids.  

Did you know that the human eye actually sees warm colors before cool colors? 

Or that in general warm colors advance while cool colors recede?  Of course the degree of saturation in colors makes a big difference.  Highly saturated colors appear closer than colors with lower saturation. 

Eiseman dedicates each chapter to a different hue and explains in simple psychological terms how we react to them. 

A Designer’s Guide to Color 3 is eye candy for quilters who love to work with color. In it author and fabric designer Jeanne Allen goes beyond basic color theory and simple color combinations to present more than 900 graphic examples of new and innovative color palettes.  

I think I might find myself thumbing through these books again on a cold winter’s night while dreaming of all the new and exciting quilts I plan to make…someday. 

Want to donate some of those old books clogging the shelves?  Drop off at Open-Books, then head inside and start collecting some more.