This should read: This blog is called Adventures in Black and White Quilts and is about making black and white quilts. "
Or, maybe it's really about black and white and all the colors in between. This blog is the brainchild of a quilt design class held May 23, 2009 at The Quilted Butterfly quilt shop in Morehead City, North Carolina. Pepper Cory (moi) led it but Carol Larimer was the ringleader and her friends Alvina, Aileen, Lynne, and Rita followed. All of the characters above will eventually join this blog as authors and add their own 2 cents' worth and pictures. We got rolling about 10:30 AM and before you knew it, the gang was hip-deep in the subtle interplay between shades of black, what prints read as grays, and is it really white or ivory?
How were we going to know what we had? And more importantly, how were we going to use it effectively in a quilt? We'd been collecting for some time and had tons of fabrics. So we each made a palette and for the first time, we saw and realized what sort of black and white fabrics we possessed. All of us had assets (strengths) and liabilities (pitiful few) in our black-n-white fabrics. It was an epiphany. At last we could get some clarity.
To make our palettes, we sorted our fabrics and then cut and used a glue stick to paste swatches on three pages: the blacks, the whites, and the grays (also called the "I don't know's-"). Here are mine:
Turns out my blacks are pretty diverse.
My whites tend to medium-scale and I can't tell the difference between true white, ivory, and slightly grubby tan.
My grays are very strange and owe their 'grayness' to my own indecision.But at least we were starting!
But before getting far into this subject: does this mean we only use black and white and grays? Heavens no!
4 comments:
After many years of quilting, I finally made a black and white (with blue) quilt in 2008. Celtic style, of course, since that's my specialty! The quilt is titled "Knotwork Nine Patch".
Pepper, did you consciously choose the fabrics shown? Or did you grab and go?
I so often create from the scraps left on my table. I wondered just to track your thought process and like the scale differences. It is always interesting to me whether something just "happens" or it is planned. For me it usually ends up somewhere in the middle.
I'm also interested in your 3 categories. I have an aversion to gray so I want to see how you use it. My brain thinks with different categories so I'm enjoying thinking along with you!
The pictured quilt is stunning. Out of my box because of the amount of color - but the negative space is awesome!
I didn't know my sailboat would fall so perfectly into what you're doing! I'll enjoy following this blog too. Good visit tonight.
You have out done yourself on this post and resulting quilt Pepper. I LOVE the quilt. Could the idiograms be made in reverse applique? Do my eyes tell me so? Thanks for sharing the process.
Post a Comment