Blue Ice Close Up

I got up on Saturday morning, and went into the studio where I worked for three hours. Gail is right, the big light green block went. It was a warm green, closer to yellow-green than blue, and this is a predominantly blue quilt, that if anything, leans closer to a cool blue, and the light warm green was also a temperature contrast that just didn't fit in with the rest of the quilt. 

The cream and whites work because they have a lot of blue in them. There IS a lot of green in the quilt, but a greenish blue is a cool color, so all those blue greens fit right in. There is also a bit of blue-purple in the quilt, which is shown in the purplish fabrics - even the blueberries. So this quilt features blues that are in the green-blue, blue, blue-violet range. There are also some fabrics that fall closer to violet. 

The photographs in this post are full-sized, so the resolution when you click, and then click them again allows you to see all the details of the fabrics. There are 44 unique fabrics in this "blue" quilt.

This is the upper left corner of the quilt. Gail wondered why I put the warm light green in this quilt that is supposed to be "blue." The answer is because I always like to have something unexpected, something unusual, something to make my viewers pay attention, and reward the ones who do. In short, I like to break the rules, and yet make it so the rule breaking fits right in. 

You don't know this, but when I was cruising through my books looking for an easy pattern to play with, I wondered if I would make another version of Ola Pola, a quilt I made five years ago. Ola Pola has some unexpected fabrics in it, so that idea was in my head before I picked this pattern.

Ola Pola (named for a Ukrainian candy, the quilt lives with my friend Daniela, who is Polish and loves sweets) is a quilt that is predominantly orange, pink and cream. Some of the pinkish fabrics had bits of blue in them, so that is why I have some blue center blocks. But they also have some green, so I decided to include a green block. But the OTHER surprise in this quilt is that I added a light green center fabric to the center of an Orange block. The RULE for this quilt was the colored blocks had cream centers, the creamish blocks had colored centers. The light green in the middle of the orange block was chosen because I wanted it to look like a light color. 

 I knew I wanted to play with this same idea in the Blue Ice quilt even before I started cutting fabrics. In the end the warm green block didn't stay (it probably would have worked if it was a cooler green), but the warm green looks just fine as the center of some of the blocks. Remember I also cut some pink and red violet fabrics for blocks in this quilt, and I just felt they didn't work either. The plan for this quilt was "dark blue" and the pink and purples and warm light green didn't fit. Neither did the red rocket.

One final note about the purplish brownish fabric on the right - I KNOW it doesn't LOOK blue. I don't care that it doesn't. I don't want you to think it is. I want you to SEE it is different. My point in this quilt is that it is close enough in VALUE that it can WORK even though it is DIFFERENT. It does fall into the color range I decided to use in this quilt, but it is just enough outside the range to catch your attention and make you say, "Wha..?" 

My Number One Goal when I make my quilts is to draw the attention of my viewer and to Make. You. Look.

Gotcha!