I know I could've have used tulle or organza and I have used both of them in the past but this time I wanted to extend myself and wanted to achieve transparency using just the value of fabrics.
I started my doing some test samples using a 9 patch block. I just glued the fabric onto paper for the samples. I got the idea to do this from the book by Christine Barnes called The Quilters Color Club.
I have used her book before and you can see the posts Here and Part 2 Here
In this first one I used just the values of blue, I was hoping that it looked as if the transparent light blue fabric was crossing over the transparent dark blue fabric and and the patch in the middle would look like a medium value.
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| Transparency using value |
In this next sample I used value and colour.
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| Transparency using Value and colour |
Finally I used Value, Colour and Pattern.
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| Transparency using Value, Colour and Pattern |
I enjoyed doing these samples but they were harder to do than they look. I had fabric everywhere as I tried to get the values and colours correct.
Anyway it spurred me on to try a little A3 sized quilt for my sample.
I got out lots of batik fabrics because they have lots of colour variations and don't fray as much.
I was quite happy with the effect I was getting but I thought I would try another background fabric, so I got out a yellow/gold ombre.
It didn't look as good as I hoped so I went back to using white as a background. Here is the finished quilt.
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| Transparency by Linda Steele |
I have had such a busy month that I must confess I made this very quickly 2 days before it was due. I didn't piece or even fuse the fabric, I just cut it out and put some glue behind the pieces.
I would never do that if it was a real quilt.
I learnt a few things by taking this short cut though.
If I did this again I would line up the fabrics properly and not do it by eye, I would piece the fabrics rather than glue or fuse and I would take more care with the spacing of the quilting lines and not just go by eye. Even though I was free motion quilting this with a ruler as a guide, it is much harder to get an accurate 1/4" when quilting on a diagonal.
Bye for now,
Linda
3 comments:
This is such an interesting post! Feel as if I was at a color theory class! I've bookmarked it for future reference! Thanks!!!!
Congrats on the showcase of your quilt, A Time For All Seasons, on the QUILT show! Just saw the email!!! I remember you posting on this piece. It's wonderful!
You've made those samples look easy, but I can imagine you surrounded by piles of fabrics trying to get them just right!
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