Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

Everything about color and design I have learned by the seat of my pants. I have a degree in chemistry, and the only time we dealt with color was identifying elements and compounds and looking for color changes as they reacted. In my job, I was in charge of instrumentation which counted alpha, beta and gamma. As far as color went, I chose what color to write data in the books. Usually black. Occasionally blue. On the day after Christmas I drew holly leaves in the notebook, in black.

When I quit my job to raise kids, I said "Now I am going to concentrate on the arts" because my girls loved coloring with color crayons, coloring with pencils, coloring with crayons, and coloring the stamps with whatever they had on hand. They also colored on the walls. Once. (I guess they didn't like plain white.) They even colored on the quilts...fortunately it washed out.

I am not normally satisfied with making a quilt just like in the book, I want to make it different, I want to make it noticeable, I want to make it one of a kind...I want to make it mine. So, when I signed up for a class last weekend with Jan Krentz (http://www.jankrentz.com/index.php), I spent two days with 1/2 inch wide pieces of fabric trying to figure out just how I wanted to put my star together. (see first picture)

I got tired of this and went to EQ5, which has two drawbacks: it doesn't have exactly my fabrics, and I haven't had the patience to learn how to use it properly and didn't have the time the day before class started. But I muddled on through to a design which I though would work -- and of course, was different than what she had suggested for class. It looked really cool on EQ5 and on the little mockup, too. As a side benefit, I showed up for class behind because nothing had been cut out at all. But at least the fabric had been washed.

After sewing it together, I put everything on the wall -- picture 2. Now I see a green blob in the center with almost no definition. So I turned the diamonds around (3rd picture), and the green blobs turn into green ends which disappear into the background fabric. The second problem is the background fabric, which worked fine in the mockup, is blah at full size. So I replaced it, (picture 4 and 5)and now I am very happy with it except for one thing: There is not enough background fabric. But that is OK, I probably have enough of something that works in my stash. Or I can change the squares and triangles of the background to accomodate things. And there are ways to fix the green blob which does not require unsewing. Which may not work anyway. So there is a lot more design work ahead of me.

But my imagination is now taxed and it is a good thing class is over.

But the real value of the class: look at my points in the last picture! Perfection!