My Space: Snap, Crackle, and Color in the Kitchen

Color may be a visual medium, but designer/teacher/author Christine Barnes of Grass Valley, California, manages to give it an almost audible snap and crackle in her quilty kitchen renovation inspired by one of her favorite quilts.

Of course you’d expect nothing less than hue-ful excitement from a pro who has built a career writing about color in quilt-making, as well as in decorating, remodeling and soft furnishings. Christine just released her fourth book on quilting and color–The Quilter’s Color Club (C & T Publishing, 2011)—and obviously lives her message about color being exhilarating and fun.

A few years ago, when she was adding on to her 1960s ranch-style home, she decided to also remodel the kitchen. Although it had custom birch cabinets handmade by the previous owner, the beige-and-white kitchen was tired and dated.

And it just happened that one of her favorite quilts was her own double-four patch Amish design made from Cherrywood fabrics in a range of vibrant violets, yellow-oranges, reds and other colors.

“I thought ‘Why not base your kitchen remodel on a quilt?’ For me it made sense,” she says. Nothing really matches the tones in the quilt, but the colors she uses–such as the soft “grasshopper green” paint on the walls– all ties together with the quilt. And that made the kitchen the logical place to hang it, too.

The second overriding influence on Christine’s kitchen reno was her fanaticism for repeating geometric shapes.

“I loooove modular designs! If I love modular designs. If anyone ever dissected my brain, they’d see that my brain cells are either square or rectangular,” she says.

The first décor element to emerge was the custom glass tile backsplash.  Although it doesn’t exactly copy any part of the quilt, says Christine, it’s still very modular and clearly inspired by the quilt. The main 8-inch motif floats on a field of standard white ceramic tile, and is composed of two 4-inch squares set diagonally and 2 opposing “squares” of 16 1-inch squares each.

Next came the custom floor, which Christine made using commercial vinyl tile by Armstrong.

The window valance also stays true to the modular shape strategy and vibrant palette. Christine made it using scrap fabric from the quilt sewn between craft plastic and hung using an IKEA wire system and bulldog clips from the office supply store. Ingenious!

(And guess what, you lucky Q-bies…Christine is sharing the valance pattern with Generation Q! Look for it soon in an installment of Playdate.)

Other features in Christine’s kitchen that got a splash of quilty color and geometric edginess include:

 

 

 

 

 

The basic IKEA clock embellished with leftover glass tile and resin beads;

The dinette table with bits of fabric “confetti” sandwiched between glass and the recycled office chairs, spray-painted and recovered with Ultrasuede;

The custom pantry, painted deep violet and fitted out with cross-reeded glass.

These projects are all so do-able, Christine says, and they really “quiltify” the room with color and shape.

That said, when using a quilt or a fabric as inspiration for a room décor theme, it’s sooo easy to go overboard, says Christine. Lucky for us she’s as generous with her advice as she is friendly:

Start with “the givens.”
Identify the bones of the room, the elements that cannot be changed. In her kitchen’s case, the handmade cabinetry would be staying, so Christine says she focused on how to refresh those cabinets and show off their simplicity. She painted them white, and added doors with cross-reeded glass.

Work with interesting architectural features.
She says she loved the French doors leading off the eating area into her studio, and played them up by leaving them unobstructed and uncovered. “You don’t want to mess up anything that’s interesting on its own,” she says.

Keep it simple.
Especially in a kitchen, which tends to have a lot going on already, she advises.  Keep the angles simple and straightforward.

Get other opinions.
But listen to your instincts, she says.  For example, one of her advisers insisted the floor tiles should be laid on point to add more interest. But Christine says she did not want to be dizzy in the mornings when she came stumbling into the kitchen in search of caffeine. Plus, the diagonal orientation would have fought too much with the diagonals already present in the quilt.

Bring it all back to the quilt, she advises. “When you’re building around a quilt as a starting point, keep everything you do true to the quilt. Simple, graphic, modular.”

—Melissa Thompson Maher (Photos by Andrew McKinney)

To learn more about Christine’s adventures in color, visit christinebarnes.com.