Jeepers! I feel like the poster child for trial and error! While working on my latest quilt I had quite a difficult time deciding on what color to make one of the design elements.
The issue was the white circles, as seen below. I loved their shape and placement, but I could see that they attracted too much attention. I needed to tone down the contrast.
So, I started auditioning a variety of other colors. Yellow?
No. I figured it should be a lighter or darker version of one of the colors already in the quilt. Pink?
Nope. Pale aqua?
Uh-uh. Enough of these pastels. What about something bright?
Hmm. Not too bad. (Actually, I tried brighter orange fabrics and they seemed a little too much to me.) How about dark red?
I like this well enough to cut out the shapes.
Well, they were no longer attracting attention, but now I wondered if they showed up enough!
I FINALLY went back to orange, now in more subdued versions.
Would you believe it? I now thought the orange didn’t show up enough. Maybe I should add some darker hand stitching around each one.
Maybe. Or would lighter thread provide more contrast?
Never one to make life easy for myself, I ripped out the dark stitching and redid it with yellow. I was FINALLY happy with it.
Whew! I’m giving myself a gold star!
What do you deserve a gold star for? Let me know and I’ll email you one.
Ellen Lindner
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