Watercolor Quilting

[ac...@sprynet.com]

There's a great class at In The Beginning in Seattle, WA that I took a
few months ago, The basic idea is to create your image or shapes using
small pieces of patterned fabrics in a huge range of values (from very
lights to very darks). Overall value is the primary consideration and
color is the secondary consideration and after that, your overall design.
I use 2" squares and have several hundred different fabrics to work from.
I buy what I think will work in 1/8th yards - maybe 50 or 60 at a time.
The fabric stores hate me. Then I separate them into darkest, dark, medium,
light and lightest (roughly) and start pinning my design to fleece. I squint a
lot to make sure I'm changing enough in value over the course of an area.
It also works to look at the design in dim light to mute the colors. The idea
is to put fabrics together so that from a distance the piecework appears to
be a continous gradation from one value to another.

I'm addicted to it.

[Pamela B. Moore]

I saw a show on TV where they suggested looking through binoculars the
wrong way to get the visual distance from a quilt to determine if the
values are working correctly. Just a thought.
Pam

[Jack Campin]

"Pamela B. Moore" <rmo...@popd.ix.netcom.com> writes:

> ac...@sprynet.com wrote:
>> Then I separate them into darkest, dark, medium, light and lightest
>> (roughly) and start pinning my design to fleece. I squint a lot to
>> make sure I'm changing enough in value over the course of an area.
>> It also works to look at the design in dim light to mute the colors.
>> The idea is to put fabrics together so that from a distance the piecework
>> appears to be a continous gradation from one value to another.

> I saw a show on TV where they suggested looking through binoculars the
> wrong way to get the visual distance from a quilt to determine if the
> values are working correctly. Just a thought.

Why not just take your glasses off?

Oh... you must be one of those unfortunate people who needs a magnifier
to read the compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

What might work better than binoculars to simulate a myopic person's
perception of a patterned fabric is to get a pair of cheap off-the-shelf
spectacles intended to correct *long* sight. This should blur things
nicely. (And should boggle the mind of the sales person: customer
tries on one pair after another, looking around and saying "no, I can
still see the design on the wallpaper, and I shouldn't be able to read
the title of that magazine...").

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Campin ja...@purr.demon.co.uk
T/L, 2 Haddington Place, Edinburgh EH7 4AE, Scotland (+44) 131 556 5272
--------------------- Save Scunthorpe from Censorship ---------------------

[Reb Neely]

Depends on how myopic, Jack. When I visited my B and SIL this summer, I
couldn't see to get an eyelash out of my eye because she had beautifully
framed the bathroom mirror in a horse collar. I couldn't get close enough!

Reb Neely

Jack Campin <ja...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<16...@purr.demon.co.uk>...

>
> "Pamela B. Moore" <rmo...@popd.ix.netcom.com> writes:
> > ac...@sprynet.com wrote:

<SNIP>

> > I saw a show on TV where they suggested looking through binoculars the
> > wrong way to get the visual distance from a quilt to determine if the
> > values are working correctly. Just a thought.
>
> Why not just take your glasses off?
>

<SNIP>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Kathy Morgan]

ac...@sprynet.com wrote:
>
> (snip) I squint a

> lot to make sure I'm changing enough in value over the course of an area.
> It also works to look at the design in dim light to mute the colors. The idea
> is to put fabrics together so that from a distance the piecework appears to
> be a continous gradation from one value to another.

For those of us who are blind without our glasses, it also works really
well to just take off your glasses. It's like you're suddenly *much* farther
away, and the colors just sort of blend and soften!

Kathy

[Holly Sullivan]

I think I saw "pamela B. Moore" <rmo...@popd.ix. say to All on Mon 16 Sep
96
08:21:

> squint a
> > lot to make sure I'm changing enough in value over the course of an
> area.
> > It also works to look at the design in dim light to mute the colors.
The
> idea
> > is to put fabrics together so that from a distance the piecework
appears
> to
> > be a continous gradation from one value to another.

> I saw a show on TV where they suggested looking through binoculars the

> wrong way to get the visual distance from a quilt to determine if the
> values are working correctly. Just a thought.

Pam, good tip! You can also buy a red or green transparent report cover
(easy to find now that the stores have their back to school stuff
available) and use that as a value finder. Costs a bit cheaper than the
big red value finder thingy sold in the stores and catalogs, and is twice
the size as well.

:)

-- Via DLG Pro v1.15

:)---Holly---<--<-@

FunAmigaPaganSysSexGoddessAndQuilterFabricArtistAndSCACostumerAtLarge :)

[Roberta M. DiNardo]

Reb Neely wrote:
>
> Depends on how myopic, Jack. When I visited my B and SIL this summer, I
> couldn't see to get an eyelash out of my eye because she had beautifully
> framed the bathroom mirror in a horse collar. I couldn't get close enough!
>
> Reb Neely
>
> Jack Campin <ja...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
> <16...@purr.demon.co.uk>...
> >
> > "Pamela B. Moore" <rmo...@popd.ix.netcom.com> writes:
> > > ac...@sprynet.com wrote:
> <SNIP>

> > > I saw a show on TV where they suggested looking through binoculars the
> > > wrong way to get the visual distance from a quilt to determine if the
> > > values are working correctly. Just a thought.
> >

> > Why not just take your glasses off?
> >
> <SNIP>
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> -
> > Jack Campin
> ja...@purr.demon.co.uk
> > T/L, 2 Haddington Place, Edinburgh EH7 4AE, Scotland (+44) 131 556
> 5272
> > --------------------- Save Scunthorpe from Censorship
> ---------------------
> >
> >

This works the other way too!

A friend of mine was wearing a lovely "watch on chain" necklace. When
somebody asked her the time, she couldn't get the dial far enough away to
read it. She exclaimed "the chain must have shrunk!"

Robin in Ottawa