Yes, It's Ugly.

Yes, It's ugly.

There.

I said it.

This is the result of the most recent tinkering. I haven't cut more fabric yet.

Did you think I didn't know? Did you think I couldn't tell?

Did you think, "Oh look, she's human. She screwed up." 

Did you wonder "HOW is she gonna make this look good?"

Did you think, "Even she can't redeem THIS?"

(And before you tell me it might not be THAT BAD, the answer is, yeah, I know that too. But "Good Enough" has never been my working motto, and this sure as hell won't be an exception to that.)

Would you believe me if I said I can agree to most of them? Because I know I can fix it. How do I know?

Well, see, I went to Art School and I studied design and color, so I know the rules. I've been sewing for over 50 years and I made my first quilt over 40 years ago. So I kinda have experience. I've been there, and I've done that. I have been getting myself into and out of creative pickles for years, so this one isn't going to stop me.

And I live for this sh*t stuff. There's nothing more I like than a puzzle, and this is nothing more than a big creative puzzle.

So let's look at the stuff I don't like.

This is a detail of the very first picture in yesterday's post. What I don't like are the way the dark bars connect from the yellow to the pink and into the blue. And right next to that, the violet and blue bars do the same thing.

I actually LIKE the flip-flip-flip of the light and dark values, and the way the diagonals make this thing look like the blinking lights on a marquee. It's VERY ENERGETIC, and that's a Positive way of looking at it. Some people think IT'S TOO BUSY, which is a Negative way of looking at it. My friend Allison says her eyes go cuckoo when she looks at some of my quilts. I actually wrote to her yesterday and apologized for what I was doing to her.  "SUCH A PAL!" she wrote back. "I've been looking at the pics with squinty eyes."

Actually, in this case it really is TOO MUCH, and I have to calm it down a bit. But I won't shut that flip-flip-flip down entirely, because that's one of the things I like best about this design.

This is from the second photo in yesterday's post. I made the picture smallish so you could see it on your screen without having to scroll up and down. There is way too much dark clumped here. If you're a regular reader you know I go harping on and on about distributing your values (lights and darks) throughout a quilt. This version has too many darks on the right side. But look again, The top right diamond has the darks on the right, and the lower one has them on the left. If you look at it the right way, you can see a wave effect, or a backwards S curve. In this particular quilt, I do not want to emphasize that shape, but this is a perfect example of a goof gone good. Had I not MADE that mistake I would never have SEEN that shape. That's the kind of thing I will file away for later use. It's why making mistakes can often be a very good thing, because they make you see stuff that you wouldn't see otherwise.

This was at the very bottom of the last picture in yesterday's post, and IN THEORY there's nothing wrong with it. The light fabric in the purple/swirl purple block is placed correctly. HOWEVER, because that swirly purple is a darker VALUE than the light around it (and it is actually an EQUAL value to the blue right next to it), this fabric pair fails in this quilt.

This presents an interesting conundrum. If I make ALL the fabric pairs with a very high contrast of light and dark, then the flip flip flip will look like FLIP FLIP FLIP, Allison will go cuckoo, and it will just be too much too look at. (Although I think the so-called design concept of "giving the eye a place to rest" is a bunch of malarkey. But that's a different discussion....)

However is is precisely this that makes this current iteration of the design fail. There is too much high-contrast and it isn't evenly distributed to move your eye around in a pleasing way.

And THIS doesn't do me any favors either. In real life, it's a very pretty combination, but up on the design wall if looks greyish, and muddy.  Gotta go.

So what have we learned? That in order to rescue this quilt, I have to tame the FLIP FLIP FLIP by reducing the number of blocks with a strong LIGHT/DARK contrast, distribute the values better overall and remove the blocks with a limited contrast in each pair. I also have to add more color. There is too much cream and white. But remember, this whole thing started because I was getting stuff out of my stash I wasn't happy with.

Like I said to Julie before I went to bed last night, "Can you imagine this quilt with fabrics I actually love?"

And right there, bingo, X marks the spot, is the biggest reason for the failure of this version. I am not really being true to myself. How can I make a quilt a magnificent symphony if I'm using fabrics that don't sing?