Transparency with Fabric

How to achieve transparency in fabric? That was our recent topic in the Waverley Art Quilters.

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.

Transparency using value

In this next sample I used value and colour.

Transparency using Value and colour

Finally I used Value, Colour and Pattern.

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.

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

The Quilter's Color Club part 2

I have the book by colour expert Christine Barnes, called the Quilter's Color Club. It's an American publication and it's really annoying that Australia and England spell colour in a different way. I suppose it's not a big deal really.

I had some time to do a few more exercises in the book. You can see my first post about it here.

Once again I used the King's Crown block as recommended by Christine and I am only using a glue stick to make the blocks so it doesn't take very long.

We started off doing a neutral block, I really love using blacks and greys these days, the value and pattern really stands out and you are not influenced by colour. The dark triangles come forward and the lighter colours recede.

Neutral

Next was a monochromatic block in Blue-violet. Monochromatic uses different values of the one colour and if it isn't working it usually means that you do not have enough value contrast.

Monochromatic

Analogous blocks use colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel and I chose yellow-green, green, blue green and blue. Although all the books say that analogous colour schemes are usually 3 colours, Christine suggests that you may use four and a touch of a 5th colour can make it livelier.

Analogous

Christine admits that she made up the next combination herself, it's called every-other colour analogous. I chose red-orange, yellow-orange and yellow-green. I'm not sure if I like this one very much.

Every-other Analogous

Everyone knows the direct complementary colours, they are opposite each other on the colour wheel and so they really vibrate together, think of the red and green of Christmas.
Christine suggests that the hyphenated colours are more appealing and easier to work with because they contain 2 primary colours in unequal proportions.

I tried red-violet and yellow-green.

Direct complementary 

Split complementary colour schemes are usually everyone's favourite but I have often had an issue with them when I've tried to use them.  They have a good balance of light-dark and warm-cool. I chose yellow-orange, yellow-green and violet.

Split complementary

The next combinations are not as well known. Double split complements uses two colours plus their opposite colours on the colour wheel. I used red-orange, yellow-green, blue green and red-violet. It was hard to use so many colours in such a simple block.

Double split complement

Tetrad uses four colours equidistant on the colour wheel, this can be a very vibrant combination and I could have diminished the tension by using lighter values of the colours. This time I used red, yellow-green, green and blue-violet.

Tetrad

The last one I did was the Triad colour scheme which is as the name suggests three colours equidistant on the colour wheel. It is usually best to make one colour more dominant and let the other colours play a lesser role. Once again it's hard when you only have one block to work with. I chose blue-green, red-violet and yellow-orange.

Triad

This has been a fun exercise to do and I would like to finish the book especially as the next exercises demonstrate luminosity, transparency, stripes and texture. My problem is that I must stop experimenting for a while and finish some quilts that have deadlines looming.

The book will be waiting for me when I get these quilts finished I suppose.

I highly recommend the book for some colour fun.

Bye for now,
Linda

The Quilters Color Club

I have the book by Christine Barnes called The Quilters Color Club.

Christine Barnes knows a lot about colour, I also have another book of hers plus I receive her newsletter by email.

I have set aside this year as a year of experimentation and maybe a change of direction and so I decided to do the colour exercises in Christine's book.

I must admit that I already know a lot about colour and the colour wheel but I am sure there is even more to learn.

Christine writes about a colour group and then suggests an exercise, she recommends that you do the exercises with a group because that way you find even more colour combinations and that would be good but for now I am a group of 1!

She also recommends that you use an easy quilt block and attach the fabric with a glue stick. Super easy.

The first exercise I did was about Value.

Value

Dark values come forward and light values usually recede, you can see that with the different value star points.

Next I had to make a block with all warm colours and all cool colours.

Warm and Cool

Christine suggests that all warm can be a bit aggressive and all cool can seem too cold.

We then had to remake the blocks but adding one cool fabric to the warm block and one warm fabric to the cool block.

Warm and Cool plus one

Apparently people prefer a mix of temperatures; a touch of the opposite temperature makes the quilt more balanced and interesting.

The next subject was Intensity; we had to make an intense or bright block and a low intensity or dull block.

Intensity

High Intensity colours come forward and low intensity colours recede although value can over-ride intensity.

It didn't take long to make up the blocks and actually it was fun.

I'll have to make time to continue with the book.

Bye for now,
Linda