Brown Zig Zags

 

Almost eight years ago I arranged the triangles for the third Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt in these zigzags. I called it Snow Day, and you can see it here. I decided to revisit those zigzags for the brown quilt.

Now in the photo above, I have not fussed over the placement  of the brown triangles. I can't really play until I get them all up on the design wall, but I do have enough to get a sense of the basic design, so I wanted to figure out a basic idea for the light side triangles. I went through my bin of leftover side triangles and put some up on the design wall and stood back to take a look.

Now I have to tell you a little design theory here. Dark AREAS tend to sink to the background but LIGHT areas tend to come forward. I do not want the LIGHT diamonds in this design to take center stage. So in order to do that I have to make the LIGHT diamonds boring and less interesting. 

Which means I have to make them boring to the viewer's EYE and NOT give them any contrast, (like color in the light diamonds). Your eye is drawn to CONTRAST, so I won't have any color in the light diamonds. So the color in the light areas above is going to go away. 

Here is the basic layout of the brown triangles so you can see what the overall thing will look like. 

You can also see the brown triangles are just randomly arranged, and they don't flow and they seem a bit jumpy and disconnected. That's the next task.

Here I have arranged the triangles so they flow into one another, and I lead you there through either color or pattern.

Here is another example of what I tried to do with the brown triangles.

It's funny, but when I first started making these quilts, I added the side triangles to the colored triangles before I designed the quilt. Now I place each piece intentionally.

Next up is figuring out which light fabrics I will use in the side triangles. The only way I can work that out is to try them up on the design wall and experiment.

My mother's boyfriend's surgery was a success and he is doing well. I have spent three days cooking for my Mom so she will be all set in her apartment on her own. She has Macular Degenerative disease, so she sees poorly. She describes it as "seeing through lace." What's good is that whatever I made, I kept half, so we both have an assortment of prepared meals for the rest of the week. I've been her chauffeur and errand runner so it's been nice to get home at the end of the day and not have to worry about having to cook.