Last night I finished laying out the corners of the quilt with the die cut pieces. I think I am going to sew this together because I doubt I can come up with anything else that I would like better. I sent such a variety of fabrics to be cut that it will never be more consistent in color areas than it is now.
I started preparing for my next project and got out all of my batik 1.5" strips. I was horrified to see that I don't have anywhere near enough light fabrics cut. I was so sure there was a good variety in these boxes. I will have to spend a day cutting light fabrics before I can begin. (But I love to play with my fabrics and cut, so don't feel sorry for me).
Here is last year's amaryllis bulb blooming again this year. I have the pot sitting on the floor and the flower stem is taller than my window sills. It has 4 flowers on this stem.
Now I am going to try to explain why I thought my Strips 'n Curves quilt that I have shown every day this week was dull and needed a facelift. I will have to go back 25 years to an experience I had. I owned a quilt shop and I made a quilt out of all one fabric line and it hung on the back wall of the shop. One day one of my customers walked in and was looking at it from a distance and asked "Is that a printed sheet?". It taught me a lesson. When all of the fabrics in a quilt are too closely matched there is no life/interest point in it. Every fabric has the same exact flavor. That is why I never use all fabrics from the same line. This quilt that I made hit me with the same feeling as one all from the same fabric line.
I started preparing for my next project and got out all of my batik 1.5" strips. I was horrified to see that I don't have anywhere near enough light fabrics cut. I was so sure there was a good variety in these boxes. I will have to spend a day cutting light fabrics before I can begin. (But I love to play with my fabrics and cut, so don't feel sorry for me).Here is last year's amaryllis bulb blooming again this year. I have the pot sitting on the floor and the flower stem is taller than my window sills. It has 4 flowers on this stem. Now I am going to try to explain why I thought my Strips 'n Curves quilt that I have shown every day this week was dull and needed a facelift. I will have to go back 25 years to an experience I had. I owned a quilt shop and I made a quilt out of all one fabric line and it hung on the back wall of the shop. One day one of my customers walked in and was looking at it from a distance and asked "Is that a printed sheet?". It taught me a lesson. When all of the fabrics in a quilt are too closely matched there is no life/interest point in it. Every fabric has the same exact flavor. That is why I never use all fabrics from the same line. This quilt that I made hit me with the same feeling as one all from the same fabric line.The strip piecing in the Strips 'n Curves quilt was way too smooth of a blend. I have been doing colorwash quilts for 18 years and I tend to blend the fabrics too well and in this case it was a quilt that really needed a little texture in it. If you have a chance to look at the books Strips 'n Curves or a New Twist on Strips 'n Curves, you will see quilts with more variety in values and not such smooth blends.
I don't usually start out with one fabric and choose all of the others to match it but I did with this one. To me it was all over mush after it was pieced with no focal point. I know that statement is a little extreme but that is how unhappy I was with the pile of blocks. I feel that now the zebra print will be the focal point and the purple print will be the unexpected spark.
The moral of the story is (in my opinion) if you are decorating a room with a quilt, you may want a more matchy look. If you want to make exciting quilts (no room in mind for them) you may want some unusual combinations in color or texture of prints for the pure joy of making a work of art. I think you probably know that mine usually fall in that second category. So, all I really did was disappoint myself, and with 54 blocks made I felt I needed to "fix" it. It all goes back to my favorite quote "To thine own self be true" (Shakespeare). If you like them really matched, do that. If you like them bold, do that, etc.
As far as pressing seams open, this book called for that. I will talk more about this later.