Changes

I have been working on updating the look of my site and the new "me" went live today!

The address is still the same www.lindabeachartquilts.com and my blog is still listed under my website on the home page, but the new look necessitated a new blog.

I hope those of you who have followed me at this blog will continue to follow me on my new blog and bear with my while I learn the "ins and outs" and get settled in.  I promise to pick up where I left off on this blog and the current project very soon.

The new blog can be found by going to my website and following the link on the home page.  Hope to see you there!  Thank you, Linda

Lost in the Landscape

 Sometimes I am at a complete loss as to what to do next when I am staring at my design wall.  All that blank space, all that fabric and no clear plan where to place it!

Figuring out what fabrics should make up the focal point or the darkest and lightest value areas is somewhat easy.  Those are the kind of major decisions that I usually figure out in my initial thumbnail sketches.

But once you've placed the fabric for all those areas on your design wall, what is left is usually medium value background spaces to fill in.  And, just because they are background areas, that doesn't make them any less important than the rest of the project.

While I don't want these areas to become "center stage", I do want them to be of interest, to provide added detail.  So I stare at my fabric and try to figure out what should go where.  While I usually like to choose, cut and pin several pieces of fabric at a time to my design wall, sometimes in these situations I just have to find my way one careful piece at a time.

With any luck, as I am carefully finding my way one piece at a time, suddenly the way becomes clear and things start falling into place!

Assigning Values

 

 Value can make or break your work so I always try to be very careful in thinking through where my values are going to be when I start a piece.

This project is one where I need to be especially careful when choosing fabrics to represent different values.  With the mostly monochromatic color scheme, it would be very easy to have everything join together in one confusing mess if there weren't clear differences in the values of the fabrics.

I am starting with my lightest values first and placing them where they will form a path down from the blue area.  I also want a few light values in some of the bushes in the foreground.  You can see in the photo above where I've selected a floral fabric with light flowers on it to represent my "bushes".

With my light values established, I can now start filling in the rest of the ground area and concentrate on variety and texture without worrying about value anymore.

Adding the forest foliage

I took a look at my fabric stash for fabrics that suggested (to me at least!) pine tree foliage, branches, etc.

I did not want to add any strong green color as I am aiming for a fairly monochromatic color scheme, so that narrowed my choices down a bit.  Seems like every perfect pattern I found was in a bright green. 

I finally found these three fabrics in my stash that are very muted browns and grays and in patterns that were exactly what I wanted.  I really love using plaids and this particular one I was able to "fussy" cut along the defined linear lines to suggest more branches in the overhead foliage.

I'm very happy with the end result, looking at the pieces pinned on my design wall - just the effect that I wanted!

Auditioning

It's fun to work through the easy decisions on any project - the decisions that just seem to come spontaneously and flow naturally.  So far I've done that by pinning the tree fabrics and that touch of blue sky to my design wall.  Starting to fill in the rest takes a little more thought.

So I audition the fabrics by pinning them to the work-in-progress.  Then I sit back at a distance and try to figure out if that foliage fabric is too dark of a value?  Is the green too bright and oddly intense?  Is there too much rusty orange in that one ground fabric?  

Building up the trees

 

Now that I've pinned up my bright bit of sky, I want to concentrate on my trees. 

 They are going to be the darkest value on my quilt and the focal point.  Bearing that in mind, I want to get them on the design wall next as everything else in this piece will need to work well with those tree fabrics.  And picking the tree fabrics will be fairly straightforward as well as they are all going to consist of a few varying shades of dark browns.

 So I can get a lot of different pieces on the design wall fairly quickly and start seeing things take shape!

 

 
 
 
 
 

My version of an assembly line

Piecing is a fairly time consuming process so I try to be as efficient as possible.  One way I do this is to cut out multiple pieces of fabric at a time.  With the fabrics ironed and laid out around my studio, I'll make my selections and place the appropriate piece of freezer paper template on the chosen fabric.

When I've made all the selections I can feel confident making, I'll take each fabric and iron on all the template pieces for that particular fabric.  Then I'll go to

 the next fabric, laying it over the previous one on the ironing board, and repeat the process.

Then I can take each piece of fabric off the ironing board, one at a time, and trace and cut out my fabrics.  And the best part? Pinning the fabric pieces to the design wall!