Planning a Foreground Design

I’ve been wanting to do a series of quilts about my family. I made the first one, Happy Family, which used circles to represent people.

With that one the circles were an 11th hour addition. For the next one I wanted to be much more intentional.

After selecting green for the background of my current quilt it immediately got me thinking about my dad, a farmer. I decided to make a quilt about both my mom and my dad. My mom is a very gracious southern woman, who excels at entertaining, gardening, and cooking. I think of her as a Southern Belle, because she’s a beauty, as well. Thus, my working title became “Daddy was a Farmer, Mama was a Southern Belle.” (Note: my mom is still alive and she’s given her blessing to this title.)

So, how to depict these two with circles??? I knew I wanted to use red to contrast with the green. And it had a sort of farm feel to me, since farm equipment is often red.

I drew a sketch on the computer and began to audition my ideas on the design wall. I thought Dad (or Daddy as I often addressed him,) needed a big red sort of tear shaped oval.

But, Mom needed to be more curvy.

And slightly pinker.

I managed to find enough red fabrics for my purposes and I’m loving these colors together!

I was REALLY tempted to complete these two shapes, but I began to think about how much easier it would be to quilt the background before adding the circles, especially since I intended to add quilt a few more blue and green ones. So, I quilted the background and started auditioning fabrics for background circles.

The background circles will be MUCH skinnier than the foreground ones. Maybe pinky width.  And they’ll have much lower contrast, serving as a background of ancestors.

The pace on this piece has finally quickened and I’m really enjoying it!

Ellen Lindner