Coming Soon!

The class I'm teaching at Quilted Threads is less than two weeks away, and it's full. I've got the lesson plan all ready, and am working on a slideshow of free pieced letter quilts to show my students. I visited QT over the weekend and figured out how I'd like the classroom arranged.  While there, I decided to swap out The White Cat's Rules for Nine x Nine.

I also bought some red fabric for the back of the Red Letter Alphabet, but that won't get quilted until after the class, because I want to show my students.

A Friend's View

My friend, The Selvage Fairy, drove up to my favorite Quilt Shop, Quilted Threads, to see the two Rules Quilts together. She sent me an email.

"No offense to your photography but OMG!!! The reds and oranges in "FUN" look like they are on fire in the black one!

I was expecting beautiful, but I'm just blown away..."

Thank you SF! You have made my day!

The Same, and Different

In my quilts, I like to make the viewer on a voyage of discovery. I want them to keep looking closer, to discover the elements I have placed there. The two Rules Quilts exemplify this. At first glance, they are the same, except for the background - one white, one black. But they are also very different in some obvious, and some subtle ways.

The word RULES uses the same fabrics in each letter in both quilts.

The word MISS is NOT the same. I wanted them to LOOK like they were the same. I wanted you to THINK they were the same. Everyone notices the ladies are different, but I've used different fabrics in the M and the S's.

Look closely (click and then click the photos again to enlarge) to see the difference.

The Rules, Together!

Woo Hoo! The two Rules quilts, the "White Cat Rules" and "The Black Cat's Rules" are now hanging side by side at Quilted Threads in Henniker NH.

I've been waiting to see these two quilts next to each other for months. It's everything I could have hoped for.

The Rules, in Black

The colors look a bit truer here. I'm happy with the way this turned out. I can't wait to see them both hanging side by side.

*Compare it with the White version, which can be found here.

Second Thoughts

I wrote about hanging Nine x Nine at Quilted Threads on Saturday night, set it to publish just after midnight, then went to bed. I woke up on Sunday morning, looked at my blog and had second thoughts.

I called my sister. "Can you look at my blog?" I asked. "I think I hung the wrong quilt. I think maybe I should have left the white rules quilt instead of Nine x Nine."

Five minutes later, my phone rang. It was my sister. "Yes."

"Yes what?"



"White Rules. DH and I agree. White Rules Quilt."

So about an hour later, my sister and I were on our way back up to Henniker, where we took Nine x Nine down and hung the White Rules quilt it its place.

It looks really nice. Don't get me wrong. Nine x Nine looked great too, but I felt that out of context, Nine x Nine looked a bit lost. I didn't have that "LOOK AT ME!" quality I felt was needed to attract quilters to want to learn to make free-pieced letters.

You can click the photos to enlarge, and then click again for more detail and to see Becky's fabulous shop!

The Black Rules are on their way to Chris to be quilted. I can't wait to see the two quilts hanging side-by-side!

Black RULES!

The flimsy isn't quite finished, but it's getting close. The word OBEY is too tall, and needs to be trimmed. I haven't sewn the last hidden fun to the IF YOU panel yet, and I need to add a bit of black at the bottom, and square up the sides. This is shaping up to be a favorite.
So why do these letters POP so much? A couple of reasons...

First, visually, light areas always pop forward, and big dark areas recede. You can't get darker than black, so the most intense light/dark contrast will always be black and white, but lighter colors against black will really attract your attention.

Secondly, we see color when light hits an object and reflects back at us. Different colors absorb different amounts of light. White reflects all light back at us, black absorbs all of it. So bright colors next to black appear to really jump out at you.

A more intense color will jump out at you more than a less vibrant one. Think of an orange (a real orange you can eat). You can't get a BRIGHTER orange than an orange. If you make it lighter, it loses some intensity, it gets a bit duller. It's the same thing if you make it darker, you lose the intensity, the brightness. (I swiped this picture from earthinpictures.com)

I used a lot of bright colors and bright fabrics in this quilt, so they really jump out. In the White Rules,the brightest color is probably the big pink F, but that doesn't have as much light/dark contrast as the U next to it. These colors are much more subdued than the colors in the black quilt.

The letters "YOU OBEY ALL THE RULES" are exactly the same in both quilts. I used the same fabrics. Actually, the reason I made TWO quilts was to show how differently the same colors look when using a white, then a black background.

Amazing, isn't it?

Outside!

There's nothing like natural light on a slightly overcast day to show off a quilt. Here, finally, are photos of my last two big finishes - the White Rules (which still doesn't have a proper title)
and Nine by Nine.
I've photographed them both at the highest resolution my camera will allow, and I haven't compressed them, so you can click the photos, and then click again for all the little details.