Sea Grass

 In August I took a class with Rayna Gilman. On the second day our challenge was to make something with a limited color palette: two neutrals and a color. Read my blog about the class here: Kiwi, Anyone?

 I selected some fabrics - whites, grays, and greens. (The color is a little off in this photo.)

I sewed the strips together and flipped the piece around.


I squared up the piece. It was a little longer on one edge than the other so it did not lie flat.

After sitting in my sewing area for a suitable length of time, my project demanded to be finished. I tweaked it by narrowing a few of the pieces that were too wide at one end, and managed to beat it into a more one-dimensional piece. I decided to use the print from the focus pieces for the backing. (I have also been using this print for the focus pieces in the 2015 BOMs.)

Then I spent some time thinking about how to quilt it. At first I thought I would quilt only on the light colored stripes, or only on alternating strips. In the end, the focus print also supplied my inspiration for the actual quilting of the project. 

The fabric also gave me the idea to use a variegated thread for the quilting.

Initially I did not plan to have so many lines of quilting, but I just kept filling in blank areas, and in the end, I liked the densely quilted result.

Voila! (Did you notice that it got flipped around again?)

After completing the quilting, I made a facing using the same old focus fabric. (I made the label before sewing on the facing this time :)). It turned out much better than last time, and I only had to do the monogramming once, but it is still a little uneven. The variegated thread looked awful on my test label, so I went with a solid green. I wish I had used the solid green to hem the facing down, but I was too lazy to rip it out and redo it. Besides, it's only on the back, right?

I really like how this turned out. I like it a lot better than "Slice and Dice." I am going to have to try the "two neutrals and a color" idea again.

One last observation . . . As I walked through the living room holding my finished project, it suddenly dawned on me that it looked a lot like our Steve Gordon painting . . . which is my favorite piece in our house! Could I have been influenced subliminally to echo the "look and feel" of the Steve Gordon?

Lessons learned:

• After squaring off and adding facings, the project will be smaller than expected - in this case, about 10" x 17 1/2". Keep this in mind when you start the project.
• Plan ahead with regard to when to use variegated thread and when not to.
• Don't use fusible web to add focus pieces, if you can avoid it. If you are adding the focus pieces at the end, would appliqué look better?

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.