Variations on a theme

(Note to Quilters by Design folks--If you'd rather be surprised by your block in March, go no further!)

I tend to work on multiple things at once, which means that the story of a particular project can be spread out over months, sometimes years.  The blocks above are the final result of the challenge I posted about in May, using the fabrics that I posted about the next day.  The basic idea:  each of nine quilters chose one or more colors.  As one of the nine, I made eight compositions, one for each of the other quilters, using their preferred colors.  (One person chose "pastel floral" instead of a specific color, which explains why the block in the middle of the left column looks quite different.)  The only size specified was that either the width or length had to be 9.5 inches.  I decided to start each of the designs with the improvised shape that I came up with in a class with Sherri Wood (described here):

I continue to like this basic shape, even after playing with it eight times for these challenge blocks.  

We'll be exchanging our blocks at our next retreat in March.  It will be fun to see what others made for me.  I gave just one color for my preference:  yellow-green.

Twenty colors

Here are the 20 colors that I dyed for the group challenge I mentioned yesterday.  Included here are a few pieces made with primaries I haven't used before, Grape (bottom of middle stack), Boysenberry (the middle fabric in the middle stack) and Strong Orange (bottom of right stack).  Before, to get these colors, I would have been mixing some combination of yellow, red, and blue; it's nice to have this quicker way (just one dye in the solution) to get these colors.

Then I sorted the piles into the colors requested by each of the participants, adding some other colors from my stash as well, and marking which participant each little stack is for.

I look forward to cutting into these fabrics, thinking of each friend as I make a small composition in these different arrays of color.

Back in the dye studio!

It's been a few months since I've been in the dye studio, which is in my basement.  This winter was so cold that the ambient temperature in the basement was about 40F, and even a space heater wasn't enough to get me down there!  But spring is finally here, and also a project that spurs me to dye a bunch of colors.  I'm part of a small group of quilters who get together for a four-day retreat each year in the Chicago area.  We've recently undertaken a challenge:  to make a small work (just sewn, not quilted) for each member of the group, with the colors determined by the recipient but the style/composition determined by the maker.  As the end result, each member will have something in the style of each other person, but in colors of their own choosing.  We can then do what we want with what we've received--perhaps put them together in a quilt, pin them up on a wall, or just keep them in a drawer.  Anyway, having a list of colors requested by nine other people stimulated a week's worth of dyeing!  I dyed a half-yard each of a number of different colors; five of them ranging from turquoise through aqua to green are in the photo above; all will be lighter once they're washed out, dried, and ironed.  I'll only use a small amount of fabric for each person's block, so this will give me a lot of new colors for my stash.  While I was at it, I dyed a couple of T-shirts with tray-dyeing; one of them is in the skinny white container above.  I also dyed a couple of large pieces for quilt backings.  The last batch of 5 half-yards is sitting in cold water now.  Once that's done, I'll start the washout procedure on the week's work and will have a big reveal in a couple of days.

(By the way, if you get notification of my posts by e-mail, I updated a couple of previous posts that marked guest posts on another blog by adding the content to my own blog--so, old information for those of you who previously followed the link.)

Triadic color scheme with black

My sister Cookie asked for more about this quilt first, so here goes!  This is a small top (about 20x25) that will be my contribution to my quilting guild's biennial challenge for our quilt show.  The idea is that the show organizers set a challenge for guild members, some limitation that will determine this one entry.  (Of course we're all encouraged to submit other quilts as well.)  This year the challenge was to work in a triadic color scheme--that is, three colors that are equally spaced around the color wheel, like red-yellow-blue or green-violet-orange.  I had a stack of solids put aside that I built off a palette taken from flowers in my spring garden: peonies, poppies, and sage.

To reduce this to triadic, I took out the deep pink, leaving me with coral, lavender, and sage green for my triad.  So, what to do with these fabrics?  Maybe you'll be interested to see how even a very simple design can involve many steps.

I started with an image I love--something I saw recently at a superb exhibition of contemporary drawings at the Art Institute in Chicago-- a small piece by Marija Vladimirovna Ender, "Color in Space":

I love the simplicity of the swatches of color on a plain background, so my first thought was to line up rectangles, using black as the background, to better show off the light-colored fabrics:

 

Very boring.  Moving the rectangles further apart didn't help either:

 Then I tried wonky squares:

And then regular squares:

Still boring.  Then I changed the scale, making the colored squares much smaller.  This I liked!

So then I just had to play around with placement of the colors, and I threw in a little variation in value also (see photo at top for the final layout).

The next stage is quilting.  I made up a small sample with 3 squares and have begun experimenting. (As always, double-click on the image to enlarge.)

 I used charcoal gray thread here on the black fabric; I may switch to black.  I may quilt each small square with something different, or all the same, or I may leave them unquilted.  Then there will be a decision about binding: black? one color? three colors?  Decisions, decisions. . .

And since I'm on the subject of challenge quilts, here's the one I did in 2008:

This is 18x27 and hangs on the door to my studio.  The challenge in 2008 was to work in pieces of three fabrics handed out to you--I know the pink was one of them, and probably one of the greens and one of the blues.  I used this as an occasion to try out some improvisational piecing, which I'd done very little of, and also some contemporary quilting designs, varying them across the space.  

This was the first piece I quilted where I actually enjoyed the machine quilting part, so it was a very successful challenge!