Tweeking
I’ve been steadily working on my current quilt. Here it is after I added all the blue-green shapes. They really helped! In this photo everything is stitched in place.
Click any image for a larger view
When I work with abstract compositions like this I do a LOT of trial and error! A lot. I work it, one idea at a time. Often, one change leads to another. I just start with the thing I’m most confident about and go from there.
I had two concerns with the composition above.
1- I wanted the blue-green shapes near the top left to be the focal area, but I felt like the light blue spot near the lower right was attracting too much attention.
2- I liked the dark blue shape, but felt like it would benefit from some variation in width throughout.
How could I modify a piece of blue fabric that was already stitched down? Easy, overlap some other fabrics to modify the underlying shape. I’ve just begun to audition this idea in the photo below.
To de-emphasize the blue spot, I had two ideas:
a – cover it with a sheer fabric to make it duller, (also auditioned in the photo above,) or
b – increase the contrast in the desired focal area.
What would you do? Or do you think it’s perfect as is? I’ll show you what I chose in the next post.
Ellen Lindner
See more quilts in progress, from a variety of artists.
