Your Baby and Color

-- something to keep in mind while choosing fabric for your unique bargello quilt

Your baby will tend to respond better (usually beginning at around four months of age) when the colors they see are rich and vibrant than when they're muted and bland.

Think about this when choosing fabric for their unique bargello quilt.

Several years ago I created this quilt from a design-book for my husband's cousin's brand new infant.

His grandmother wrote back to tell me that her grandson was fascinated by the lively, exciting colors in the quilt. She said he seemed to enjoy being wrapped in it as well as looking at the bright colors.

This is not a bargello quilt, but the positioning of the colors does induce eye movement when you look closely at the pattern. Eye movement is the hallmark of a bargello design, but other quilts can have this property too.

Induced eye movement, like this, could be an important factor in helping develop eye-muscle coordination and the ability to focus properly.

According to Marieb (Human Anatomy and Physiology, 5th edition, c. 2001), "...vision is the only special sense not fully functional at birth. ...The newborn infant sees only in grey tones, eye movements are uncoordinated, and often only one eye at a time is used. ...By five months, infants can follow moving objects with their eyes, but visual acquity is still poor (20/200). By the age of five years, depth perception is present and color vision is well developed." p.601

And from D'Amore (Basic Physiology, c.1961), "The eye can distinguish between about one hundred sixty different shades of color." p. 611 This is NOT 160 colors. This is 160 shades of one color!

We have three primary colors (red, blue, yellow), three complimentary colors (orange, green, violet), and two non-colors (white, black). Then all the mixtures of those colors make different colors. So the possibilities for using of all those colors are huge!

Color Wheel -- endless possibilities

When choosing fabric for your quilts, remember that babies tend to respond better when the colors they see are of the rich, vibrant primary-color variety (red, yellow, blue).

Watch your baby ... (as if I need to tell you that!). Show him various colors and note his reactions. Chances are you'll see that he starts to react to colors around four months of age. However, in my opinion, it's never too soon to give your infant potentially beneficial experiences.

His uniquely colorful bargello baby quilt could be one of them.