Monday, February 20, 2012

Auditions...

Yesterday I was auditioning....fabric and placement!

First, materials for a 12" square for an upcoming regional show -- SAQA Western Canada's "Best of the West", opening sometime in June.  As I played with the materials and their placement, I was thinking about the stitching and embellishment I wanted to use.






And second, with pieces for "The Picnic Quilt", made from the 2 1/2" and 4 1/2" squares I created when I recently sorted my scraps.  I still have a stack of 4 1/2" squares to use up, so it's going to be larger than what's on my design wall -- and undoubtedly what you see below will be re-arranged before the top is assembled, but I'd done enough pieces that I wanted to see what sort of combination(s) I could get if I put 'em up there.  I was concerned I had so many 'darks' and 'brights' and not that many 'lights' and 'neutrals', but once I stepped back for a good look, I was pretty happy with how the top was playing out.


I'm thinking ahead to the quilting, too.  If I decide not to tie it, but to quilt it by machine, I'm betting an over-all design would work best -- and I'm going to check out what Ann Petersen, instructor of "Quilting Big Projects on a Small Machine" over at Craftsy.com, would suggest.  :-)

And Samples...

More and more I'm requiring myself to take those thoughts and put them into samples, rather than going directly to the block itself.  I used to think that the 'direct hit' was a better use of my supply of funky donated fabrics (which cannot be replicated and therefore tend to be thought of as "precious").  However, my recent experience with that three-dimensional windmill has once again reinforced the value of sampling.  In the end, I'll use less fabric making a sample or two than I would if I went barrelling ahead, making the whole piece, only to find it didn't 'work'.

RE: the Windmill -- here are two more samples I made on Friday -- both of which I like better than the first one, and from both of which I learned something about the mathematics in block design and the materials used:

Felt 'sails' with lightweight fabric background

Playing with sheers








1 comment:

Gina said...

I really like the blooming plant one--very spring-like feel!