The Cocktail Party Analogy

I took a class at Quilt Colorado called "The Role of Color in Your Quilts", taught by Bill Kerr.  You can learn more about Bill and his wife Weeks Ringle at:
http://www.modernquiltstudio.com/
Here are some photos of a couple of quilts he has made and shared with the class.
He told us "The Cocktail Party" analogy.  I hope I get it right here - I found it very interesting.
He said some quilts are like the boring cocktail party you go to every year during the holidays.  All the same people are there, you talk about

all the same things and one year kind of runs into the next.  These are the matchy matchy quilts made from one line of fabric and everything goes together nicely but it's kind of boring.
Then, he said, there is the cocktail party you remember for all the wrong reasons.  There was just one person there who was loud and obnoxious and ruined the whole party.  This is the quilt where one fabric stands out screaming "look at me!" and your eye is drawn just to that

fabric and it kind of ruins the rest of the quilt.  Finally there is the cocktail party that is fun and interesting because there are a wide variety of people there from different walks of life but all are connected somehow.  It is a fun, interesting party because there are many different types of people to talk to and many things to learn from one another.  This is the quilt where you draw different types of fabrics in from different lines, throw in some that you wouldn't ordinarily put together, but that have a connection somehow, either with color or scale of the print or

illustration style and it makes the quilt much more interesting and appealing.  Look at this quilt he showed us.  Look closely at the fabrics. Many of these fabrics I would not have dreamed of putting in the same quilt, yet with this design, this quilt is very interesting and appealing.  He sat and pointed out why these fabrics were chosen and how each connected in some way with another fabric in the quilt.  This makes me excited to start a new project and see what I can put together!