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.

Switching Around

 

I started cutting the light triangles for filling in the gaps of the Prism quilt. I've got some polka dots coming for the other spaces.

I washed and ironed some fabrics yesterday morning. Then it got warmer, and the last thing I needed was something to generate more heat, so I switched gears.

I sorted through my pinks and chose one for the border of the as-yet-unnamed pink and white zebra quilt.

I cut the strips, joined them at an angle and sewed them to the quilt.

Now I have to work out the backing. This one will likely be a bit scrappy. After that I have to add enough white space around the edges of the pink birds quilt (Yakkety Yak).

I've been watching a lot of tennis from the US Open and it has been absolutely stellar. Having cut the cord with my cable company I was worried I wouldn't see much, but that has not been a problem.

Speaking of which, I took this photo on my way home from California. That big white octagon in the middle is Arthur Ashe Stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where the US Open is played. The white box to the right is Louis Armstrong Stadium. that crescent shape is Court 17 and the round blue shape below Ashe is the unisphere from the 1964 World's Fair. Just above and to the right is Citi Field, the stadium where the Mets play baseball. This is probably as close as I am going to get to the US Open tennis, so I was delighted to see it.

Learning From Mistakes

 

I've sewn all the blocks together for the pink and white quilt. It will have a pink border, but I haven't yet decided which pink. 

The quilt reminds me of my granddaughter's pink and white striped dress.

The quilt did not turn out the way I expected it to, but it gave me some ideas. Learning from a mistake is a good thing. The previous ribbons quilts (Yellow Ribbons and Greensleeves) were successful because of the value changes between the "waving ribbon" and the big triangles. I like to play with your head, and make the colors flip flop back and forth, but that can be tricky for the average quiltmaker. Making the quilt essentially a two color quilt makes it more accessible. 

Then again, you know me. I can never leave well enough alone. All you have to do is look at the photo above and you can see where this is going.

OOOoooh!  Yeah! (As Julie would say, "Go Lynne, go!")

So, go Lynne did.

This is a Zebra quilt. You can get my tutorial for the quilt here, at my Etsy shop.