Tag Archives | Abstract

Well, after painting those (challenging) fabrics I had to figure out what to do with them.

Since I wasn’t crazy about some of them, I knew I’d need to cut isolated portions and motifs for use. I had NO IDEA what my composition might look like, but I started cutting out sections and MINDLESSLY sticking them up on my design wall.

Apparently my brain likes order because I soon found myself adding each piece so that it filled the space left by previous pieces. Soon, a design was emerging.

I did make one very conscious decision at this point: I decided to place the pieces with the white background near center, since I knew these high contrast pieces would attract attention.

And so it went. I had found a dotted piece of blue and green and added it to the mix.  It worked well and expanded the color palette.

I threw in a little of the orange, too, of course.  It was looking wild and I was trying hard not to over think it!

I had some gaps and auditioned commercial fabrics to fill in.

Before long I had the base muslin fabric covered.  Now, it was time to examine what I had with a very critical eye.  Was this wacky combination heading in a usable direction?  Should I start all over with something calmer?  If I continued,  I knew some editing/deleting would be in order.

I removed (temporarily???) the orange, replaced the too bright blue lower left, and moved things a little. I felt like I was getting close.

Future questions:
– The white areas seem so blank.  Should I add something small scale in that area?
– Does it need something lower right?
– I’d like to add the orange back, but how can I best do that?
– Does it need something darker?  Black, even?

About this time I decided on a tentative name, “Splash.”  That would certainly affect some  future decisions.

Thanks for joining me on this wild ride!

Ellen Lindner

After doing LOTS of trial and error on my current quilt, I finally decided to cut it into pieces and to reassemble it.  My goal was to add some skinny or small pieces of black, to move the black around the piece more, and to add interest to the composition.

Of course, I could cut the piece into equal panels, but I decided to audition more radical solutions first.  (As you may have guessed, my experimentation was done on the computer.)

What if I cut it into curved shapes and then rejoined them?

And added black between the pieces.

Interesting, but sorta…hmm, awkward.

What if I cut it into angled shapes and reassembled them?

This time (above) I also rotated some of the pieces 180 degrees and I rearranged the position of the panels.  That added a lot of energy, I thought.

Next, I added black between.

I was pretty happy with this. But, it was time to also consider more predictable arrangements.  Here, I’ve “cut” my composition into 4 panels.It looked a little boring after some of the earlier arrangements.  What if I flipped some of the panels?

Ah, yes.  This has much more energy. Should I move the panels around?  And maybe scoot things out of alignment a bit?

That’s pretty cool.  But, I eventually decided the irregular shape didn’t really add to the composition.

So, here it is: my final plan.

I’m kinda in love with it.  To me, it has the right amount of energy and the black lines help pull it all together.  Time to quilt!

Oh yeah, have you got any ideas about a title for this piece?  I’d love to hear your suggestions.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. THANKS to so many readers who offered their thoughts and suggestions on my earlier post. I had more comments than almost any other post.  I hope you’ll also chime in on this one!

Good grief.  I’ve about worn out my brain cells trying out different ways to proceed with my current project.

I was really thrilled with the background composition but felt like it needed to have some more black added.

But nothing that would detract from the black already there.  Maybe something loose and organic that would play up the chunky diagonal line between the white and green?  With that idea in mind I began to experiment.

Maybe a wild heavy line?

Or maybe little jagged black pieces to create the line.

Or a thinner more controlled black line?

Or maybe the line should be created with the same shapes showing in the green and pink fabric at the bottom.

You can’t say I didn’t try! Finally I gave up on the idea of playing up the diagonal line and looked for other ways to add black.  Something like this, maybe?

Well, I liked that better, but felt like I was till far away from the right solution.

At about this time one of my readers. Eleanor Levie, suggested adding black vertical strips. That got me thinking.  I began to consider the idea of cutting the piece into sections and reassembling it, along with the addition of black. But, should the sections be vertical?  Or maybe slanted?  Or even curved?  And should I put them back in their original locations or mix them up a bit?  If the latter, what kind of shape might I create?  And what about inverting or rotating some of the sections?

Well, as you can tell, that took me down quite another rabbit hole.  I’ll show you those experiments next time.

Ellen Lindner

Working on this quilt inspired by fall foliage, I added many more little orange bits.

Hmm, maybe I got carried away there. I removed a few and it looked better.

And here it is finished, called Mid-October.

I liked it.  But something was bothering me.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Have you ever had that nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right?

Remember the great fabric I used in my quilt Initial Response? I still had half of it, ready to use on the next project. This portion made me think of fall leaves, with the twigs and branches of trees peeking through.  Can you see it?

That was enough to get me started.  From there I cut it into 9 pieces.  (Not square, of course.) If you look closely, you can see the cuts, above.

I decided the feature fabric should be about 1/4 of the quilt design, which helped me determine the size.

I put 4 of my 9 pieces in the corners and scattered the others throughout.  Then I started filling in with fabrics from my stash, both commercial and hand dyed.

Soon, I had this.  “Not bad,” I thought.

I added a little more interest with some small snippets of plaids and stripes.  And then began to audition twig fabrics and widths.  I decided most of them would need to be pretty skinny.

I added QUITE A FEW twigs and was happy with the results.

As I thought more about fall leaves I realized I should probably add some color variations.  I tried several fabrics in the orange family. Some were very bright and sort of took over.  Maybe I could still use them in small pieces.  Others were too dull and were removed from consideration.

In the next post I’ll show you what I did with these fabrics.

Ellen Lindner