PRIZM Takes Shape

 

I wondered if I had something better than polka dots in my stash for the lighter triangles in the PRIZM quilt. I had to really hunt to find these, and before I could make any changes I had to make sure I had SIX light sort of pale fabric, and enough of them. As you can see from the photo above, I did.

Last night, as the Alcatraz / Medvedev match went through the third and fourth sets, I cut my strips and this morning I sewed them together and cut them into triangles. 

(btw, WHAT A MATCH! NOBODY saw that coming.)

Here are the warm tones.

And here are the cool ones. They are separated with various WOWs.

I arranged the lights differently than I have in the past. I decided to make them extend beyond the bright triangles and "continue the wave", sorta. I did a colored drawing so you could see it better.

And if you look at the drawing and think, "that's kinda muddy," you're right. In Design, dark areas tend to pop forward (visually,  unless you do something to push them back) In this case, using the WOWs between the pale strips connects the light areas visually, and because they don't have a lot of contrast, they don't "fight" with the bright blocks, and sink nicely to the background, allowing the bright sashaying shapes to come forward and command your attention, which is what I want them to do.

In the drawing I didn't bother taking the time to make it fussy - I wanted to convey the idea that the lighter areas were connected to the shapes by their color.

The contrast between the two sets of triangles is what is required to make this particular quit a success. You need the primary shapes (in this example, the six primary colors) to have a great degree of contrast to the fabrics that make up the secondary shapes (the paler triangles. In the earlier versions of the pink quilt...

I had fairly strong contrasts between the pairs in the sashaying triangles, but the secondary triangles didn't really have any place to go. Their darks were often equal in value to the lights directly adjacent. So the sashaying triangles did their thing, sorta, but the lighter triangles really distracted from that. And THEIR dark fabrics didn't sink back into the background, so they fought with the sashaying ones.

I believe that if you have to THINK about what a design is trying to do so you can figure it out, then the design is a failure. PERIOD.

What's kinda funny, is that the green version, Greensleeves seems to work in spite of this:

In Greensleeves, the sashaying shapes are LIGHTER, and while the contrasting shapes are not all darker fabrics, (they are generally duller, or less intense) there is a kind of ambiguity that makes it work. The other thing that makes it work is the sashaying shapes have brighter, more patterned fabrics which capture your eye. And this photo is somewhat deceiving. In real life, this quilt is much more successful than in the photograph.

That the green one works better than the pink one is also due to the fact that there is a larger range of values to work with in green than there is in pink. Between light green to dark green there is an ocean of difference. But between light pink and dark pink, not so much (and available fabric makes it less so.)

Now, Gail. You didn't like the reworked pink with whitish because there was, in your estimation, too much blue in the white. To wit:

However, it was the biggest piece of light anything in my stash that was big enough (yardage wise) to do what I needed to do. I didn't mind the blue, because there are several kinds of color contrast: Value, Hue,  and also Temperature. The pink quilt use primarily Value contrast, so introducing a cool bluish white was another way to make the pink show up. Besides, I keep telling everyone that pink is really nothing more than a light red violet. So in color formula it is this: Red = R, Violet = Red + Blue. Thus pink is a light RRB. Blue is an inherent part of pink, so the blue was not out of place.

If you don't LIKE something, that's a SUBJECTIVE opinion. It doesn't mean the design is bad or wrong.

Lastly, some have asked WHY did I take this apart? What did I think was WRONG with it?

The answer: Nothing. Nothing whatsoever was WRONG with that quilt. It was perfectly lovely. It was fine. It was OK. It was predictable. 

THAT was what was wrong with it. It did not SING! It did NOT say "LOOK AT ME!! LOOK AT ME SOME MORE!!!! LOOK AT ME AGAIN!!! Don't look AWAY! ME! ME! ME! LOOK AT MMEEEEE!!!!"

Now, it's OK to laugh. But I am quite serious. With my quilts, I want to grab you by the collar and say LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME SOME MORE! OH YOU JUST FOUND SOMETHING YOU DIDN'T EXPECT? LOOK AT ME AGAIN."

This quilt was an epic wimp. So I took it apart.

The Wrong Road

 

This is the inspiration wall above my ironing table. On it are favorite photos, thank you cards, birthday and Christmas cards; quotes, postcards of artwork I like and all kinds of other fun stuff.

There is also this. I keep it front and center to remind me that I am human.

The pink and white zebra flimsy is no more. I have taken it apart. Next up is to remove all the white triangles and then pivot and do something else. I think I know what it is, but I am not going to get ahead of myself. I still need some more time on the couch with the seam ripper. Fortunately there's plenty of good tennis to watch while I do that. 

I had been on the fence about it. What prompted me?

I dropped off three quilts to my longer quilter, Janet-Lee Santeusanio, yesterday, and picked up Black Abacus, above. 

I also brought this, and asked JL if it would be a problem for her if I used it on the backing of a quilt. She said it would not give her machines any trouble. Then I showed her the pink and white top. We both agreed it was lovely, but there was nothing special about it, and that if I backed it with THIS (above) who would want to look at the other side? (Not me.)

So I decided to take the mediocre flimsy apart and figure out something else. AND I decided to make another panel like the one above, join the two together, and have a terrific quilt.

Making Lemonade

 There's a saying that goes, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

I am getting fabrics together for the backing of the pink and white zebra quilt. I figured I'd use what was in my stash, but I knew I'd use all the leftover pink triangles somehow. So I stated to lay them out, and I got an idea. Or rather I remembered one.

Instead of arranging the extra blocks as I usually do, emphasizing the contrast between the triangular blocks, here I arranged adjacent blocks so the darks in each "connected," creating rhombus shapes instead of triangles. I figured once I got to the center, I'd change direction.

I needed more, so I designed a second row, a mirror image (more or less) of the top row. I used only the leftover pieces, but I did cut a couple of triangles from the leftover 8-strip sets from the original quilt.

So this is the result. It's about 36" x 72", and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll add the fabric you can see in the top photo to either side of this, and then fill in the top and bottom and then that will be ready for quilting.

Still needs a name, and yes, I know this could indeed be the "front" of a quilt.