Visual Weight

There's a thing called "visual weight" and we all know what it is even if we haven't got a term for it. Sometimes we need to look at things a different way ("reframing the problem") to see it.

Last week Cherie wrote to me off line and said she had a hard time "reading" the a in PAPER because some of the colored dots in the background fabric made the letter look like a figure 8. I disagreed, but the busy background bothered me more in those gold letters than in any other part of the quilt, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was that bothered me.

Actually part of me knew the problem was that those letters didn't have the visual weight of the letters higher up in the quilt. Was it because they were lighter in value or because they were lower case? Or because they were thinner. I had too much on my mind to worry about it.

On Saturday, during my letters class my pal Julie texted me and expressed her concern about the gold letters. Before I left QT that day, I bought a bunch of green fabrics (the row across the top).

The other night I made a green P.

This picture tells the story. I am not sure the other letters will be lower case as well, because I think they don't have the visual weight as the rest of the quilt and it will look top heavy if I don't. But I think the green is already an improvement.

Adapt, Improvise, Overcome. And never settle.


If you want to make your own free pieced letters (without paper piecing, patterns or templates) you can get my tutorial, here on Etsy. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.