Saturday, February 2, 2019

The Writing Birds

When making any quilt you have to be aware of CONTRAST. The black of these letters show up on the white of the background because there is a strong Light/Dark contrast. Black and White is the strongest Light/Dark contrast there is (duh.)  

But if I use letters that are not as dark as black, the contrast diminishes and at some point becomes impossible to read.
What the last sentence read: But if I use letters that are not as dark as black, the contrast diminishes and at some point becomes impossible to read.

What this means is that the shapes become indistinguishable from each other and the pattern of the shapes, the way they work together disappears. That is never good.

So I couldn't use some of the lovely writing fabrics from yesterday's post with this background fabric. They would disappear, so I had to make some adjustments. This word bird may not use the letter fabrics in a particularly original way, but it works, and that's more important.

If you couldn't make out the shapes, or if they didn't look like they were part of something you could understand, it would be a failure, no matter how "original" the fabrics might be. So learn this lesson. When you mix fabrics together, you want to get the bang for your buck, but your design has to show through.

(By the way I have a really good tutorial that shows you how to use your fabrics to get more out of them. You can find it here.)

Writing bird # 2 has some old fashioned ruler fabric for the wing, and old fashioned typewriter keys for the breast, and more word fabric for the beak. This bird is actually a play (or variation) on the traditional Hot/Cold Contrast of warm red and cool blue (or turquoise).

Here are the two Writing Birds together.




If you would like to make your own Writing Birds, or Garden Birds, or Winter Birds, or any kind of bird you can think of (I've made birds based on people I know and things I have seen..) you can get my bird tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.


2 comments:

Judy in Michigan said...

All your birds are terrific and I have learned so much from your explanations. Btw, I do have the tutorial!!! It's great!!

Quiltdivajulie said...

Especially like the red and yellow writing bird with that fabulous background fabric.