I always tell my students to push beyond something that they think looks good.
Breaking apart the central medallion style of one version yielded something interesting.
The nice thing about digital photography is that you can take pictures to store an interesting variation for future review. I really liked this, but didn't want to make a lot more blocks to fully explore the idea so I cheated (improvised).
This is not my design wall. I took pictures, then printed them on paper, made copies, cut apart the blocks and started playing.
By the time I got this far I knew it was a design I would sew together.
This arrangement is a bit too "regular" for my taste. I will have to break it up a bit more, but that shouldn't be a problem.
I'm still wrestling with how to arrange the fabrics, but I know I don't want something with this much contrast. When I feel ready, I will go in the studio and start cutting up fabric. It's been cold lately and being in there when I am cold is not much fun.
AT ANY RATE...
I can hear some of you.. "BUT LYNNE, you were thinking about long rectangles, and blue ice. This is squares and it looks like waves of water..."
And this is when I tell you to STOP BEING SO DARN LITERAL and to GO WITH THE FLOW. Just because you started with one idea, doesn't mean you're married to it. You should see what happens when you play. You find a new direction and follow that. It is called being creative. Do I know where this will lead? I do not. Do I worry I will screw up? No. What if it doesn't work? I will fix it. I will come up with another idea and try that. Does this frighten me? No. Will I waste fabric? That depends on your definition of waste. If it helps me figure out where I am going and I end up making a killer quilt, working up to that idea will not be wasteful, so my answer is no. Your fabric isn't doing you any good on the shelf.
WHAT I WILL PROBABLY DO... Is just play with these ideas, and then put them all away and start cutting fabric and making blocks and putting them up on the design wall and go from there. I don't want this to be overworked and too fussy.
Loose Ends!
1. The replacement 3' x 4' mat arrived today.
2. I will never, ever, ever use EQ to design my quilts. I can design quilts without it. Besides things look different on a design wall to scale that a computer image cannot duplicate.
3. The fabrics for the 58 Carats quilt were collected over a period of 30 years. They come from different designers, different manufacturers and many of them are in the 10 - 30 year old range. They are not available now, and most certainly do not come in "a set." There are Philip Jacobs, Kaffe Fassett and Tula Pink, along with a host of others I do not know. Most are unavailable now.
4. The Waltzing Matilda quilt will eventually live with a friend in Sydney, Australia.
6 comments:
And some day there will be another wonderful quilt that we all will ooh and aww over and say "how did you ever come up with this?" I also play with "paper" blocks on my wall. So I will sit in the back row and say WOW !!
Ah! A little "Go with the flow!" is good advice for all of us!
-Jean
❤
I don't think it looks like waves of water. I think it looks like tire treads when somebody slides on ice.
Another interesting turn in your quilt process. I have an old version of EQ, used it a few times and stopped. No shade on those that use it to the max, in fact good for them on having the gumption to learn it so well. For me it seems like designing quilts with it could become a hobby of its own. Then again, I never did take any tutorials, so maybe I'd have a different opinion if I had. OTOH, I can't see myself printing out so many copies of a block, even at reduced size, like you do either, due to cost of ink.
Will your test blocks go back to the stash (orphan block bin?), or do you do something else with them?
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
(I'm the very lucky friend in Sydney, Australia!)
Megan
Sydney, Australia
Lucky Megan ...
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