You Really Didn't Think...

 You really didn't think I would make a quilt so uniformly ... Blue, did you?

SURELY, my regular readers would expect me to put in some sort of joke...

Or visual pun,

Or anomaly,

that MAKES YOU LOOK!

Surely you all know that I love nothing more than breaking the rules while following them at the same time. Above there is indeed one purple triangle. It's been in the photos all along, but you have missed it because....

VALUE SUPERCEDES COLOR!

(Nyah, ah, ah!)

So, for those of you who missed it, you can often substitute a different color in your quilt as long as it is the same VALUE. Most people will miss the difference, because it looks like it belongs. It DOES belong, because it is the same VALUE.

So the title of this quilt is: Needle in a Haystack.

As in, Needle? What needle? Where?

I love to put surprises in my quilts to reward viewers who are paying attention.

SO, why purple? Well, there are some pinks in this quilt, in the light blocks with the insects and beetles and the lotus leaves. 

Pinks are really light red-violets. You can see the relationship in the photo above. I tried this red violet block in the quilt but it didn't "hide" as well as the purple did when lined up with the other blue triangles.

As you can see.

Purple is a mixture of blue and red, so the purple block fit in with the overall plan. Of course I used a fairly nondescript print so it wouldn't draw too much attention to itself.

THIS IS IMPORTANT...

WHAT I WANTED was for the different block to DISAPPEAR with the others. I wanted it to be there, but I WANTED it to HIDE. I wanted viewers to notice it if they looked hard enough. Had I WANTED it to show off, I would have used the red-violet block. This was a conscious choice. The color, the print, the location for this block were all specific, conscious. and deliberate choices.

When YOU make YOUR quilts, you have choices too. WHAT do you want your quilt to say? How do you want your quilt to LOOK? How do you want it to FEEL (visual feel, not texture.) As Yogi Berra famously said, "If you don't know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else."

I knew what I wanted this quilt to be from the very beginning. The choices I made were choices that would make that idea come to life. It is very important to know that when you make a quilt, or any other piece of art.