Color/Value -- This is a Neat Trick!

There have been many bloggers talking about color value.  I took a class several years ago with June Coburn on color theory.  She led us through several exercises to do color value analysis.  I have retained some of it, and try to remember what she taught us that day.

 

I think I have a pretty good color sense and memory.  It's like my eyes remember a color of fabric or yarn I have and I can come pretty close to picking out things that coordinate, even if I don't have the original fabric with me.  Sometimes I fail but mostly I do OK.

 

I was cleaning up a bit in the church guild supply cabinet last week and I set things into general color families on the table.  Things are easier to work with if they're organized.  The reddish stripe landed next to the star fabric.  You can't see it too well but there's a green stripe in that fabric.



 

 

The fabric to the left of the stripe is green leaves.  It's a pretty good blend.  We have this pattern that needs six colors of strips, so I pulled in the tan and the white, and that floral with the gray background because there's green and tan and white in it.

 

I was not exactly thrilled with that final, because the gray kind of made groaning noise with this combo.  I took the pile home and found the far left fabric, which is really much more gray than blue as it shows in the photo, but that's my basement light fighting my camera.

 

So now I have seven fabrics.

 

I made the photo black and white.  There's only one dark fabric, the green leaves fabric in the center.  Four fabrics read as medium and two are light.



 

 

General thinking is that most people tend to buy mediums.  Some of us have to struggle to pick up lights or darks.  If you see the fabrics in color, you see differences.  Red is not green, blue and green can be differentiated by most human eyes from yellow...

 

But change them all to B&W, and some things kind of run together.  In the picture above, the stripe, the stars and the florals have flashes of white attached.  Depending upon the amount of white, the values can read as similar or you might see contrast but the difference is not as noticeable.  Light is light but the only fabric that reads as dark is the center fabric.

 

That still makes a lovely quilt, but might be classified by some as low volume or low contrast.  And that's OK, that might be just the look you want! 

 

The quilt that comes out of this group will still have contrast.  I'm still thinking that I might need to pull those two fabrics with gray out and come back with something very dark, like forest or black, that either is solid or reads as a solid.

 

It remains to be seen how this one will turn out.  This is not my general color wheelhouse but that reddish fabric appeals to me for some reason.  I think I'm going to like it if I make the right choice on the sixth fabric.  Stay tuned!

 

Sew on...

 



The Latest Project

When I don't have a book to read or a meeting over lunch, I love to browse the web for quilt blogs and see what others are doing in social media.

Beware -- a tangent is just ahead!  Social media to me seems like a very unsocial place lately.  Mean tweets, cyber-bullying, sexting that goes viral -- anything going viral!!  Can you think of anything less meaningful?  How about meeting up with some friends and chatting Face To Face??  How much more social is that?  LOL!  (She says as she blogs.)

So I've been seeing this sidebar icon recently that says "I took the process pledge".  I wanted to know more.  I always want to know more, but this pledge looked like it was going to deliver.

Clicking around, I found the original posting.  Dated May of 2010, the idea came from a quilter in Michigan.  She wanted people to post the process of whatever they were doing, not just a photo and comments on a finish.  I thought, what a lovely idea!  Like someone willing to help you do what you do. 

People are still linking up and taking the pledge.  There are as of today 980 bloggers who signed up to take the pledge and linked up.  However, and you knew there had to be a however, didn't you?

I clicked on several of the links in the 900-980 range, which would appear to be the most recent, and what do you think I found there?  Almost to a fault, the ones I viewed had photos of finished items and very little illustrated process.  Disappointment reigns.

IMHO when you take a pledge it's a promise, like a Scouting oath or the Pledge of Allegiance.  I hope that I haven't promised something and then didn't make every effort to deliver. 

Mom always said "don't make promised you can't keep" and "never break a promise to a child".  For the record, I didn't take the pledge but I'm trying to keep it!

This is my current project... my aunt bought a pattern at the WPS quilt expo to make a table topper.  It's super cute.  I'm sure you can pick it up at any quilt shop or google it and order it online.

When she opened it up, she got a little intimidated by the cutting directions.  The pieces are small -- one and a quarter inches wide.  She has trouble with rotary cutting anyway due to having had glaucoma so she asked if I would read the pattern and cut her a kit. 

The piecing directions don't look all that difficult if you have the pieces organized. I made myself a chart and started in.

The pattern recommends that you mark the pieces and separate them into baggies.  This turns out to be a very helpful idea.

 Because some of these pieces are really small...

 

So far it's been fun.  I really love this part of the quilting process, planning the fabrics, cutting the pieces, even reading the directions! 

 

I'll let you know how the sewing goes when we get there...

 

Sew on!

Good Gramma, Bad Gramma

Yesterday we were hosting Miss A overnight.  Miss E was at the beauty salon having her eyebrows waxed because Homecoming is this week and she's a whoop de doo freshman this year.

This girl will seriously know some poor fellow or fellows for a loop when she shows up for the dance on Saturday night in the dress she bought...



Tell me that's not a heart-breaker in the making...

The dress is a knee length sheath covered in lace, with a sheer overskirt that is split in the front and gets long in the back.  With her shoes on, it's a perfect fit and just the right length.  But the dance is in the high school gym, and they aren't allowed to wear street shoes on the gym floor.

Can Gram shorten the skirt so it doesn't drag when she's barefooted?  Yes, I certainly can do that.  So last night at 8 p.m., when the VP debates started, I took myself down to the lower level sewing studio to work on it.  Good Gramma. 

Miss A was upstairs watching something suitable for children on the TV in the den.  Her normal bedtime is 9 p.m.  DH was on the main level watching something unsuitable for children or wives, definitely not politics.  He likes scary movies and we do not. 

Miss E had gone back to her house and was probably doing homework and watching the dog.

It was very quiet in my house.  The dress was holding all my attention.  At around nine thirty p.m. DH yelled down the stairs that he was going up to bed, and I should turn the lights off when I came up.

Suddenly I remembered that Miss A needed to be in bed a half hour before!!  As I ran up the stairs I could see that all the lights were on!  I said to myself: Bad Gramma!!  She's been up an extra half hour and she's going to be cranky in the morning.

DH was in the guest room, tossing a quilt over a prone figure laying on the bed, and turning on the night light.  We looked at each other and started laughing.

Miss A was sound asleep, in the clothes she was wearing when she came over.  Evidently she either put herself to bed without changing into PJs or fell asleep reading on her NOOK with the overhead light on.

We turned off the room light and went back to our respective tasks.

Good thing she's a self-directed work team!

Sew on...

Fun Stuff!

Sadly, I've been unable to find the bobbin hatch cover to my Viking... boo hoo!  I'm calling Frank's this week to see if they have one or can order it...

My naked bobbon...  :-(

Good think I have other options for sewing, because look what came to my house last Thursday!  A box full of quilty potential from Mary Mulari at Mary's Productions in Aurora, MN!

And check out the cool box it came in!!   Pacific Northwest Fish decorations were all around the sides of the mailing carton.  I'm saving this baby!  It's too cute to recycle.

I got 35 fat quarters, the whole Mary line from last year and this year, both Chatterbox and Church Lady, along with a lovely kit for a Church Lady's Apron.  Here's a link to the pattern, and Mary's lovely artwork:

http://www.marymulari.com/patterns/Church_Ladies_Apron_pattern

Can't wait to get it sewn up and show it at my next guild meeting.  (P.S. I didn't get any financial consideration for linking up but I do love what Mary does and have no trouble recommending it!)

Sew on...