Sarah R plays with color, value AND shape

For the color and value exercise, I wanted to make something with rotational symmetry.  I started with paper.  I didn't have gray, so I approximated the medium values with tan and blue.

Then I used black, white and gray fabrics in the same design:

The two darker fabrics posed a value challenge: at the store, I thought the speckled one was darker but at home I decided the more uniform one was darker.  The whole thing is kind of busy.

For the color version, I used scraps from previous projects (I think I mentioned that I have a kind of fascination with red, green and yellow).  I don't know where that pink fabric came from, but I like it against the red.

Then I started seeing trapezoids everywhere and, inspired by one of the designs in the book, I decided to reconfigure the shapes.   Also, go back to blues.  First I used 5 different values, splitting the long quadrilaterals in half to make trapezoids, but then I decided it was too choppy.  So I covered up the medium dark trapezoids that had been in the corners. In the lower left, you can still see the edge of one that wasn't covered completely.

In the process, I discovered why trapezoids are an under-used shape in quilting:  it is far too easy to cut them with the wrong orientation!  I created a lot of small scraps before I got the long and short edges in the right places.  Finally, I decided to reconfigure again to make a more "traditional" block, with more triangles.  This also allowed me to use some of my "wrong" trapezoids.

I just wasn't interested in deliberately making an unbalanced design, so I stopped here.  It was fun to play with value and color, but I also like shapes!

Color and value - a start

Hi everyone,

I have been working on the black-white version of the design for the current assignment.  The first trick was to come up with a design.  This is an area that I'm a bit uncomfortable with (looking forward to future lessons in the book!).  So I looked through a quilt block book I bought years ago to find a design that is sufficiently interesting to support 5 values (light, medium-light, medium, medium-dark, dark).  Luckily, there were several choices, and the neat thing about this book is that it shows you the block, its component shapes, and what happens when you use more than 1 block together.  I chose Celia's Nifty Nine Patch, which was created by the book's author:

From Celia Eddy's The Quilter's Block Bible (now you know my religious affiliation!)

Then it was on to finding fabric for the 5 white-black values, which meant a trip to the fabric store (yea!).  It's a good thing we had to pick 5 values for the last assignment, because that experience made this part was a bit easier.  I still feel like I could have picked a slightly darker medium-light value and slightly larger medium-dark value, but one has to stop somewhere.  Here's the set I got:

Last night, I cut pieces according to the value system of the original design, and here's what the quick layout looked like for a block:

The block has a whirligig feeling from the way the values are arranged, and it's kind of cool to have that movement in the piece.  I had cut out enough of the shapes to make 4 block replicates.  So I put them onto fusible fabric, and set the blocks next to each other.  And then something happened that reminded me why I love this stuff so much.  I like the single block, but the sum of the 4 blocks is awesome!

The focus of the pattern becomes the intersection of the corners, not the center of the blocks.  You lose the whirligig, and instead, you get a visible weaving pattern on the diagnoals that is highlighted by the value arrangement.  The cool thing about putting blocks together in quilts is that the whole can be so different from the component pieces.  I like this pattern more in black and white than Celia's color version (and she does a great job of picking interesting colors).

The next step of working with color is, surprise!, a lot harder.  I've been noodling around at the edges of this, trying to use only fabric that I already have.  I discovered that I don't buy the extreme lights and darks.  I think is a common, mostly because the fun fabrics are high-contrast patterns or more subtle middle values.  In picking these colors, I'm also looking ahead to the color schemes in the next lesson, which helps me pick colors that might go together.

Deciding on the value of contrasting colors is really hard, as we discovered at our last meeting.  I have been using the photo image trick to remove the element of color and compare what I've picked.  Here are my best attempts at this point.  The color photo is first, then the black and white.

Above:  complementary color scheme - purple, yellow
(I don't have good purples, so these are more purple-red)
Below:  the grey scale version

Above:  split complementary color scheme - red, green, blue
Below:  the grey scale version

These are by no means perfect representations of the original grey-scale shades, but if I want to avoid a trip to the store, this might be the best I can do.  I thought I would do only 1 block of each of these color schemes, but after being bowled over by the 4 blocks in black-white, I might have to to do the same with the balanced set of color blocks.  We'll see ...

Happy noodling to you all!

Sarah N

Sarah N's 3 balance/value/scale compositions

I thought I'd share my 3 compositions from last month.

On the left, I followed my usual tendency towards asymmetry.  I realized a couple things with this first composition.  First, I placed the big dark square off center, but this meant there was a narrow band to put pieces in under the dark square.  It was easy to let this get too congested with small contrasting value pattern, leaving the rest of the piece without many of those small scale squares.  So I learned to make that bottom strip as plain as possible and avoid a lot of contrast that draws the eye to the bottom.  As a byproduct, I also found that I needed to distribute the small scale contrasting pattern throughout the composition to encourage the eye to travel around the piece.

In the middle, I decided to fight against my asymmetric tendencies and make a roughly radially symmetric composition.  That large square in the middle is like a big black hole, so I tried to pull the attention from the large dark square by putting the darker 2nd largest squares in the 4 corners.  I made the rest of the composition mostly symmetric by placing the lighter 2nd largest squares on the middle of the sides, forming a cross when combined with the large dark square.  Then I tried to make the interstitial spaces similar in pattern.  Easier said than done with this set of squares, and like Sarah R, I combined some of the smaller squares/rectangles to make larger similarly-valued pieces that would bring me to symmetry.

For the third composition on the right, I decided to see if I could create a gradation of color in a bilaterally symmetric pattern (relative to the diagonal).  I didn't fully achieve symmetry, but as in the second piece, the deviations from symmetry create interest.  I also largely removed any small scale pattern.  The group decided that would be ok if this were one of many squares in a repeating pattern (e.g., for a quilt).

For those of you who choose to dive into this, it's definitely tough, but you learn a lot.  I found that the first composition was a lot harder because you are learning the constraints of the distribution of shape size and values.  Agter that, you have a base of knowledge to work from.

Sorting color by value

This post is for Cynthia and Cheryl, who couldn't be with us.

Each lesson, we have added a design element to our composition assignment.  So far our elements are balance, value, and scale.  Lesson 4 and 5 add color to our design element tool box.  The first lesson is about seeing value in color.  It is not an easy task, but we developed some tricks.

For our evening exercise, we had about 20 squares of fabric with different colors, patterns and values.  The task was to sort by value.  We started by picking the lightest ones and taking majority votes on the value order.  We learned that our eyes see value differently, and that a strong pattern can be hard to place in the value ordering.  When we got to the middle values, we shifted to sorting from the darkest to lighter.  Eventually, we had to deal with the middle, which had some patterns with strong contrast (light/dark difference) that made it hard to figure out the sorting.

A few tools can help us see relative value in color.  In our session, we squinted, used binoculars backwards (this works better with a less powerful magnifier than my birding glasses), and took photos to gain perspective.  A black and white photo made value clearer for us, but after we got the hang of it, even the color photo was informative.  You can also use red cellophane to evaluate value - it removes hues (colors) and leaves mainly the light/dark element.

Below are the photos.  They are a bit odd because I had to take the picture right next to the overhead light.  The colors are far more yellow than they should be, but you get the idea.

Hope to see everyone next time for some fun and camaraderie!

Sarah

Our initial sorting - perhaps you can
see some areas that we needed
to resort

Our final sort, although it looks like our
checked fabric is missing.  I don't think
we ever reached consensus on the
ordering because of how we all see
color and value a bit differently.
You can't tell here, but there were blues
and purples and greens in the mix.

Feeling down today, I followed Sarah's lead and got to work on the scale and value exercise.  Here are my fabrics:

I agonized over the darkest one, wondering in the fabric store if the stars made it too light, but I'm glad I picked it because it is solsticy and the dark pieces tend to dominate whatever composition you try.

Here are my sets of shapes:

Below is my first attempt at a composition before reading the instructions. I wasn't trying to achieve symmetry but did it (sort of) around the diagonal anyway, mainly just trying to balance around the four corners.  I have not ironed it down and probably will redo it.

After reading the directions, I tried for symmetry around the vertical.  I think it is mathematically impossible!  So I cheated at the top by rotating four of the small squares by 45 degrees.  Another alternative would be to slice them in half and stack them because those little vertical strips where they sit are only 1/4 inch wide.  Overall, I kind of like this one

I thought I could crack the code by explicitly making it symmetric about the diagonal, below, but that didn't work either (close, but no cigar).  See if you can find where the symmetry fails! 

My hypothesis remains that strict symmetry is not possible within these constraints, but I like my almost-symmetrical compositions better than my first attempt at asymmetric balance.  Not out of the woods yet, mood-wise, but it helped!

Assignment 3: composing

(You might start with the post from last week, which discusses picking the fabrics.)

I thought I'd try and tackle one of the compositions today.  I began by laying out the pieces by size and value, and it was kind of interesting to discover that not all shapes are present for all values.  The medium light and medium dark have fewer squares and I think there is more dark than anything, including some funky rectangles.

The distribution of values

The big dark square is a dominating force, but the squares in the next size down are also something to contend with.  I had to revise what I was doing after discovering that remaining gaps in the composition didn't match the shapes I had left.  Here's my first attempt, where I realized I had a 1" square left over, which is not supposed to happen.  I also noticed that I had a lot of activity in small squares at the bottom and alternating purple (medium) and navy (dark) blocks across the top. 

First attempt

I squeezed the remaining shape in and rearranged values and small shapes.  In the process, I lost a few small 1/2" squares, and had to make some new ones.  Below is where I landed.  I like it better because the balance of the values and sizes is improved, but it still seems a little busy at the bottom.  This is because I only left a couple inches below the large dark square.

Final version

This is obviously asymmetric balance.  I will try something that is symmetric next.  Good luck with your journey ...

p.s.  If you are working with fabric, I ironed one side of a sheet of heat 'n bond on the base 16" x 16" fabric, placed the pieces on this side, and then ironed the pieces I had placed onto that base sheet to fuse them to the base fabric. 

starting again

Greetings,

When I'm feeling down, sometimes I take refuge in working with fabric.  That's what happened today.  I ended up getting started on assignment 3, picking the 5 fabrics and cutting up all those tiny little squares.  I hope it really will form those nice square blocks that the book talks about.

My dark, med dark, medium, med light, and
light fabrics, sorted into the 3 piles

I found it difficult to pick the 5 values.  Eventually I found set that seemed to do the job, but I still wonder if I have enough contrast.  I also tried to stay in the same color series because it can be hard to judge value of contrasting colors (we'll work on that again in December).  And I tried to minimize the pattern in the fabric so that the composition wouldn't get too busy, although I now see that one of my fabrics definitely breaks that rule.  Anyway, I'm committed to this set.

I cut a 16 x 16" piece of fabric to set the pieces on.  I'm going to use the heat 'n bond fusing on the 16 x 16" fabric so that after placing the individual squares on the big square, I can just iron them down.

I am excited about starting to tinker with these fabrics now, and look forward to a little more time in my quilt room.

Sarah

getting started on assignment 2

Greetings y'all!

I am a free woman, having finished my class last Friday and had a meeting cancelled due to the storm out east.  So I am starting to work on assignment 2, which is to translate one of the black and white pictures to a value-based abstraction.

The first issue is how to outline the shapes of different darkness or value levels.  The idea is to get away from the content and into the balance conveyed by light and dark.  I thought I would try tracing paper, which obscures the detail somewhat.  In the picture below, the Grant Wood picture is covered by tracing paper.  You can see how the tracing paper fuzzes up the detail.

Overlaying tracing paper
and adding some outlines

The picture also shows my first stab at outlining the whitest and the blackest areas in the Grant Wood image.  As I started working on the outlines, I noticed that some of the value in this picture was quite similar.  Upon closer inspection, I could see that the value distinctions were indicated by pattern, which I found to be a bit confusing.  To sort that out, I remembered another handy tip is to obscure detail:  squint your eyes, and the image will get coarser.   Alternatively, if you have binoculars or a view finder,  look at the picture by using binos (or view finder) backwards.  In other words, point the end that you would normally put close to your eyes towards the picture.

The main thing is not to get too mired in the details of the shapes and shades of gray (no pun intended!).  As I drew, I really wanted to get the outlines true to the contour details, but that's an urge I should probably suppress.

Good luck in your odysseys!

A brief start on composition 2

Remember when we talked about the fear of trying out ideas?  One of the ways this manifests for me is wanting to avoid wasting fabric with an idea that doesn't work out.  In essence, I am afraid to cut into my coveted fabric, and the fabric becomes an object rather than a medium.  I managed to step through that fear this evening, and I was glad I did.

I keep wanting to do something with that fabric I talked about last week, but nothing seems to work out when I lay fabrics together.  This evening, I noticed some zebra looking fabric in my black and white fabrics.  These two fabrics are below.

Elaborate fabric that keeps drawing
me in, and the zebra fabric that
helped me see a way out.

Feeling frustrated with the more elaborate fabric, I got to thinking about what I could do with cut-outs of the zebra pattern.  (This urge is probably from the collages I did today with friends.)  It was easier to see how the zebra motif would work, so I cut out some of the motifs in the zebra fabric.  As with my first composition, I'm using a checkerboard background for this piece.

The zebra fabric didn't look very good on my cream background (too busy), but the motifs were fine on the black background.  I then went back to the elaborate fabric and started cutting out shapes, which are these funky curvy things.  These shapes seemed to have more constrast on the white background, and got washed out on the black background, which is calmer.

The next problem was what to do with these motifs.  I've been wanting to consider radial symmetry because it doesn't appeal to me as much as asymmetry does.  So I started working in this direction, and here's my start.

The beginnings of a radially
symmetric design

This isn't really the 2 bar motif I started with, but I've decided to try and make the rays roughly linear in that spirit.  To do that, I'll have to put a couple of motifs together to make extended rays on the radial design.  This seems to create some interesting textures and patters.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out next weekend.

That's all for tonight.  Happy playing to you all!

Motif

OK, I've never posted to a blog before, but here goes!

So far I only came up with a motif, which is "vertical things".  I took a few photos.

I like  ones where both vegetation and built items are vertical.  I hope I'm more successful in placing pieces of paper where I want them than I am with moving the images around in this space!

The road suggests simple left-right symmetry but I also plan to try asymmetric balance on either side. 

 

First composition

Well, it's been a nutty week, but I did finally manage to get back to working on things this evening.  Since my last post, I decided to keep things pretty simple and explore the black-white world in fabrics.  I pulled some fabrics and picked on a few that I would try playing with ...

1.  Cream with gold scrolly things
2.  Cream with black vines and brown leaves
3.  Birch tree stem motif (unfaded and faded)
4.  Black/grey with different gold scrolly things
5.  Oriental with mixed white, grey, black gold

Somewhere in the week of percolating, I gravitated to a simple 2 bar motif.  I think that was partly because of the design of the bed quilt I mentioned last week, and partly because it keeps the composition and construction simple.  

When I started up tonight, I went back to the fabrics to look at them.  I really like the bottom oriental fabric (5).  I am still trying to figure out how to includee this one in a composition, but it's really active and I'm not yet sure how to deal with that.  I also like the cream with gold scollies (1), but I don't have much of it, so had to leave it behind for now (maybe I can use it in some small motif?).  That left the black (4) and the cream (2) for basic square backgrounds, and use the  birch trees (3) for the motif fabric.  I liked how these fabrics work together, so I was ready to move on to trying a composition.

I didn't really want the angles to be sqaure on the 2-bar motif.  I tried to noodle around with angled piecing based on a technique I learned a few years back.  I couldn't quite remember what I needed to do to achieve the effect I wanted, so I eventually just cut pieces the size and shape I was interested in and laid them on squares of cream and black.  That was a lot easier, and a reminder to stay simple.  After playing around a bit, here's what I came up with ...

I still have to fuse the fabrics together, but I like what happened for now.  At this point, I am going to leave this one and try to work on another form of balance.  I have a super crazy week coming up, so I doubt I'll get there for another week.

But in the couple of evenings I'll be home, I hope that I can take a bit of time to stare at what I've done and at the fabrics that are awaiting the next composition.  Taking a little time to play with ideas in the evenings seemed to help me this past week when I finally had some time to focus on the assignment.

Here's hoping everyone has a moment to think about their own compositions!

Greetings to my friends!  I have been toying with the idea of sharing thoughts in between meetings via a blog.  Well, I'm taking the plunge and am trying to see if I can figure out how this might work.

This weekend, I started working on my motif ideas, which is probably the hardest part of this for me.  I liked my 1/2-page rotational design from the exercise, so that seemed a good place to start.  Here's the photo ...

I was also interested in exploring the basic block form of a quilt I'm getting ready to sew (see below, but think muted blues, greens and tans for something much calmer to put on our bed).

I tried a couple of other things (including the letter E inspired by Sarah's I), but kept getting drawn back to this, so I guess this is where I'm going to explore my designs.

I'm not much of a sketcher, so to explore some ideas, I cut a 5" black square and made 3 white bars to mimic the basic block of the quilt I'm working on.  Then I started playing with them.  Here are some images of the stuff I was playing with ...

Basic bock of future quilt

Working towards a radial
design, liked the negative
space of the bars

Working towards a radial
design, divided into 8 parts

A second try - more
visual motion in this one,
nonoverlapping bars
seem like a better design

Starting on asymmetry,
but this seemed too
circular

Asymmetry again,
liked this one better

Another option for
asymmetry, but not sure
where this would go

Next, I explored design options with different bar lengths, borrowing from my rotational symmetry exercise.

Seemed like too much
negative space

This might create some
nice negative patterns
in a block design

Decided to play with 3rd
bar, but this creates too
much weight on 3 bars

Liked this better, but still
like the 2nd photo best

At this point, I'm letting it rest a bit.  I will use fabric with iron on adhesive, but haven't thought much about color.  I am contemplating black and white fabrics because there are some fabrics with really color b&w patterns, and I've never played with them before.

Anyway, maybe seeing this is helpful to you, and maybe it isn't.  What I've learned is that making a sketch book or journal or blog might help me do a better job of naming why I like or dislike a particular option.

Feel free to comment, and hope you are all getting a few minutes of your own to start doodling with your motif.

Sarah N