Chip It and Quilt It

Sherwin Williams has a tool called Chip It that allows customers to pull up to ten colors from a photograph.  Of course, the idea is to sell paint, but what about using the palette for quilting?  Doesn't that sound pretty awesome?

It's very easy to use, just take a photo of something interesting and upload it to the app. A few weeks ago I was at a local restaurant and snapped a photo to send to my hubby to tease him.

The picture was still hanging around, so it became my test photo.

To test the app, I quickly made an account and logged in.  One click allows the user to either upload a photo or input a website address.  A few seconds later, I got this 

Now, I did something wrong because notice that the chips don't have names.  That's because I copied the paint chip not realizing that I should click on it first.  Bu I kept at it and figured it out.  It wasn't difficult at all.

It turns out that you can edit colors.  The app gives you ten to choose from, and you move them around so that the most used color is on the top left (#1) and the least used color is #10 on the lower right.  Of course, you can arrange the colors in any order, but the five in the left column are the ones that show when you're looking at your whole "book."

I tried it again with this photo of the sweetheart roses in my backyard.  I didn't make any changes to the chip card so you can see how closely you agree with it's evaluation.

So how to use this in quilting?  

I see a couple of applications...first you can use it to choose fabrics for a photo that you plan to replicate in a quilt.  Quick and easy way to check the fabrics that you may have already pulled, also.

Another way to use it: when you have a fabric that you love but need to add more pieces to it snap a photo and Chip It.  The photo and chips will stay on the Sherwin-Williams site.  When you go to the quilt shop, you can log in to see the photo and get suggestions for fabric colors that will coordinate.  

Finally, there are times when we want paint to match the fabrics that we already have in a room.  This is perfect for finding just the right paint colors.  One of the big ideas in DIY is to repaint furniture and fabrics.  Again, snap a photo of the item you want to match and get the colors right away....no guesswork or confusion.

Can you think of other ways to use the Chip It app?