Kiwi, Anyone?

Today was Day 2 of the workshop with Rayna Gillman. We were challenged to make something using a limited color palette: 2 neutrals and one color. This was intended to allow us to focus on design without being distracted by colors.

I have to confess that I am not sure what "design" is, or what makes a design "good." I guess the idea is to play around with it until you like it, then get some feedback from others and then play around with it some more.

I decided to use grey, white and green. I started out with strips, the same as yesterday, because I was not yet in touch with my inner designer.

On the design wall

I added a kiwi green focal point to one of the strips and sewed everything together. For no particular  reason, I flipped the piece around, in case you were wondering.

Here is my focal point. Ta da!

When it was my turn to get feedback I was encouraged to add a few more partial strips to complement the focal point. I did so (and I broke one of the rules by adding strips made of a print containing blue and purple).

I'm not sure whether I like it better with or without these additional focal points

I used fusible web to add the strips because I had already sewn everything and it seemed like too much work to rip out stitches and cut and sew partial strips together and then re-sew. It felt like cheating, but I reminded myself there are no rules.

Although I didn't feel that I was focusing overmuch on color for this one, I also didn't feel that I had much of a focus on design. If design is what order the strips are in and how wide they are, I did focus on that. If design is making different shapes and patterns, I didn't really do that. I stayed with what I knew from yesterday.

I like what I ended up with. It feels "artsy" to me. I plan to finish it and hang it up somewhere. Maybe.

After two days, I really feel that I have moved up to the next level of quilting. I have created two projects without using a pattern or instructions. This is SO not me. This is SO far outside my comfort zone. Rayna is so encouraging.