Flowers & Color Choices

 

I went to the flower shop yesterday because I felt I needed a pick-me-up. Normally I can go into the walk-in cooler and pick what I like, but there was a leak so all I could do was stand at the door and point. I pointed because I didn't know the names of half the stuff. I started with the black dahlias and then chose the Solidago (my SIL helped me with the names later). Then I added the purple orchids (one of them is a branch that extends out to the side in front of Millie.) Next I chose the lavender Lisianthus and added the two Gingers (the big pink things at the top). I picked the misty statice (filler) and then added a yellow green hydrangea.

Adam, the florist, kept saying how beautiful the bouquet I had chosen was. I lamented I had forgotten to bring a vase. Adam offered to put it in a vase for me. OK, so I let him go do that, telling him I wanted it pretty as it it were up against a wall, so pretty on 3 sides. And I told him to add whatever he thought it needed, since he was a florist and I wasn't.

Now, there were at least eight different colors of roses, and lots of bright colorful Gerber daisies in the cooler. But I wanted different. I was drawn to the black dahlias and the yellow-green of the Solidago. Just like buying fabrics, I checked out everything that was there before I made my choices. Once I had decided those two things, I knew which direction I was going in, so I picked the orchids, the lavender flowers and went from there. Adam suggested a Stargazer lily, but I said no, because I knew it would take over, and I didn't want that. I picked the two pink ginger things. I also selected the various greenery. Later I realized I was selecting flowers the same way I shop for fabric.

Since I didn't know what anything was, I hadn't paid any attention to the price chart hanging on the wall. I was not particularly surprised when he said it was eighty bucks. Hell, I thought the thing was eighty kinds of spectacular, and it was FOR ME. 

What surprised me was that Adam kept saying how beautiful what I had chosen was. I mean, like, DUH! But when I thought about it later, I realized that most customers wouldn't be drawn to a deep blue violet / yellow green color combination, so that combination wasn't on his radar for "beautiful." 

He packed it all up in a box with filler around it, and wrapped it carefully, and actually carried it out to my car and gently placed it on the floor on the front passenger side of my car.

I had to pick up a prescription at the drugstore, so I went to the drive through. After I completed my transaction, the gal inside told me she thought my flowers were beautiful. I hadn't realized she could see them. That kinda made my day.

Then I went home and cut binding for four quilts, which I will show you tomorrow!
 

Magic Carpet, finished

It's finished. I'll have to hang it on the quilt rack outside to get a really good straight on picture of it in good light, but for now this will have to do. This quilt was designed in one day from leftover big diamond shapes I had cut out for the diamond quilts I made. I had cut about half the blocks, but as I designed the quilt I raided my stash for more fabrics. There are 62 different fabrics here, and each fabric is used once. There are a few prints that are shown in different colorways. The fabrics were all in my stash. I didn't shop for anything. Had I planned it I probably would have made something a bit smoother and more "regular" but I'm happy with it. Each diamond is 8" across by 16" tall.

This is a big picture, so you can click it to make it bigger and scroll around to see the fabrics in detail. There is one fabric in there, an Alexander Hoffman, that is 35 years old.

Inspiration

This morning, I found inspiration (or a color story) in the draining rack in my sink. When I take plastic stuff out of the dishwasher, it is often covered in water droplets, so I put in in the draining rack. This is what it looked like this morning.

Where can you find a color story?

From The Beginning

As I have been writing these posts, I have come to realize that it might be helpful to bring you through ALL the steps I go through when I select fabrics for my birds. So here I will bring you step by step how I selected, discarded and eventually decided what fabrics to use for a bird.

Here's the inspiration photo of J & P. I was attracted to the teal shirt J is wearing and the contrast with the rusty red shirt my brother is wearing. Originally I thought the beak fabric would be the tan of the ground.

I first picked the teal on the left, but it was kinda bland, so I picked the one with the slightly larger print. I don't have a lot of muddy colors, but this brick red seemed the best match.

Yeah, I like this brown for the beak, but there was something else sitting nearby I wanted to try.

As soon as I set it down, I knew the gold would NOT work the way I wanted it to as a beak.

OK, so I know what COLORS I want, now I have to make sure I have the right FABRICS to tell the color story.  Time to go back to the stash and see what's hiding in there.

This is left over from the backing of the Treasure Trove quilt. There are a lot of bird wing possibilities here.

Then I saw this Philip Jacobs fabric from my I-just-bought-this-washed-it-but-haven't-ironed-it pile. Oh yeah, this turquoise flower has bird wing written all over it. (And you thought I bought it for something else?)

Time to review the brick red...

Oooh... this red ruler fabric would be VERY cool, especially since it looks like tape measures and my brother is a carpenter, but that's not quite the color I want, so back to the stash I go.

WELL! The dark areas of this fabric is exactly what I am looking for. I already know the color would work with my turquoise, but I'll have to arrange the fabric precisely to get the look I want. (It's called "fussy cutting").

OH YEAH! This looks perfect. ... But then I noticed that bright green in the middle of the turquoise flower, and I thought, Ooooh!  What would that look like?  Only one way to find out.

YES YES YES YES YES!

Now, almost any of these combinations would have made a good bird, but I don't want to make OK birds. I want to make AWESOME birds, so I even though what I first choose is OK, I keep pushing to find something better. That's the real lesson here. Don't settle. Keep pushing those ideas around.

The first idea you come up with is invariably not particularly original. Keep trying new things. Try different fabrics with different patterns and different scales. Move the color around too. If you are using a turquoise (which is a light blue green) try fabrics closer to blue or green. My brother's shirt is much closer to the color of fabric I eventually selected, but either of the brick red (dark red orange) would have been equally successful.

Also, a bird with either of my final beak choices would have been worked. I particularly like my birds with beaks that have a nice contrast and add a little ZING, but a bird with the tan beak would also be very beautiful. (You could also have used that purple from the flowered fabric.) The answers are usually sitting right in the fabrics you have in front of you. You'll never know until you try.

A great IDEA is only an IDEA until you make it happen. Execution is just as important, and is often quite another kettle of fish! Here, I've placed the beak wrong, so when I add something to the right side of the block, I'll end up with a snub-nosed bird. Argh.  and the size of the wing triangle cut off the green part of that turquoise flower, so the green beak doesn't connect to anything. It doesn't need to, really.  And I am having doubts about the combination of wing and breast fabrics.  When I get thoughts like this, it's time to take a break. I'll stop and have lunch. Then I have an errand to do. When I get back, I'll reassess.

 I've decided I like the fabrics and colors even though the bird is a bit dark. I unsewed the beak panel from the rest of the bird, and then took the beak apart from it's a background and then put it all back together, making sure I'd end up with a pointy beak and enough room for a seam allowance.

I'm happy with it.

Mom & Poppies

One evening, while my Mom and I waited for our dinner in Colorado, P & J brought us some poppies from their garden.

 
The poppies themselves were gorgeous, but the picture they made with my Mom was even better.  Why? Orange is the compliment of Blue. What that means is blue and orange lie opposite each other on the color wheel. Orange is made up of Red and Yellow - the other primary colors that are NOT Blue. Compliment pairs make visually exciting color combinations, and since the blue here is a pale blue, the combination is more relaxing and more pleasing.

I took a picture right away, and it turned out to be one of the best ones of the whole trip. I knew it would have to be interpreted into a bird.

 Searching through my stash for just the right orange and just the right blue, I found this large print I bought several years ago. It's pretty clear this is the right fabric for a bird based on the photo of my Mom and the poppies, but how to decide what part to use?

Try them out, of course! Taking photos and then comparing them side by side helped me figure out which one looked best.

I used the blue of my Mom's sweatshirt in the beak of the bird.  As for the striped legs... well, I had made so many dark legs for birds for this quilt, I felt it was time for a little fun. For this bird, I think it is well suited, and this bird seemed to need LONG legs! I'm really happy with it.



If you would like to make some of these free pieced birds, go to my Etsy shop and buy my tutorial. It explains everything you need to know to make your own birds.*


*One of the reviews of the tute made me laugh:

Where Did That Come From?

You've seen the birds, and the photos that inspired them. I thought it might also be useful to see the full pieces of fabric I used to make them. This also gives you an idea of the potential I see in the fabrics I buy.

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You too can make free pieced birds. My tutorial tells everything you need to know. You can get it here, at my Etsy shop.

8000 feet

I am at 8,000 feet above sea level, and Mt Princeton in the background, rises up another 6,197 feet.

I am back from a week's vacation in the "high desert" of Colorado, 8000 feet above sea level.  To put that in perspective, Denver CO is 5280 feet.  If you need more perspective, my town is 308 feet above sea level. (Mt. Washington, the highest peak in NH, comes in at 6288 ft.)

Yeah.

It means your body works harder because it has less oxygen. It means you need to stay hydrated by drinking LOTS AND LOTS of water, wear sunscreen and a hat because the sun is hotter and your skin burns and dries out faster. It means you "suck air" at any remotely strenuous activity, like hoisting myself into my brother's gigantic pickup truck.

We took a ride up to Monarch Pass on the Continental Divide, 11,312 feet above sea level. On the flight home, when the pilot said we had reached 10,000 feet and could now turn on our electronic devices, I turned to my Mom, "Gee, we were higher than this on the ground!!"

And the humidity was zero. So a 94F day was warm, but not unbearable.

This is just beyond Kenosha Pass

I never think of myself as a city girl, but OMG, Colorado is vast. You could fit the state of New Hampshire into Colorado eleven times.

We stayed at the Mt Princeton Hot Springs Resort (8190 ft), where I floated in a pool of 107F water under the stars. I had hoped to see the Milky Way but the nights were too cloudy. I did, however, see more stars at night than I ever see at home. Of course, I got an app for my phone to help me out (SkyView).

My brother's barn. It is post and beam construction, and he designed and built it. It is unlike any barn I have ever seen anywhere in my travels.

I took zillions of pictures, of the landscape, of barns, buildings, chickens, flowers, plants, rocks, cats and all kinds of other stuff. It is safe to say I found inspiration everywhere.

Near Kenosha Pass. I think this is a terrific color story.

Here are some of my favorites.

A lime green door to a shop in Salida CO. See the quilt in the window?

A chicken sculpture near Mo' Burrito in Salida CO.

Some of my brother's chickens in his barn.

Near Fairview Colorado. This is another color story.

You'll be seeing more, lots more, in the coming days.