Here are the final photos for today….the last few feet of the land journey, masts and tackle.

The final photo is from the “town” side of the bridge, looking back at the Marina park. The Godspeed is in the parking area–look where the water zigs to the right…the Godspeed is the brown/tan thing just left of the trees. In the middle ground, you can see a ramp down to a narrow channel. The Godspeed will be launched by movoing the trailer onto the boat ramp (at high tide!), and one inch at a time, making that VERY tight turn and sailing into the harbor.

The total bummer news is that the ship will be launched next Saturday—at the same time as Joshua’s Regionals Wrestling Meet in Belfast (40 minutes from the harbor)…sigh……. Hope they don’t sail out of the harbor that evening, because I want to see her afloat in Rockport!

After all these “lessons,” someone might ask how I usually pick colors for my quilts. Usually, the idea for the quilt pops into my head, and usually the colors are fairly clear from the start. A rare exception was Circular Paradox, which began with a notion for a deep, space-dark blue background, a leftover nautilus shell from another quilt, and some of my brighter hand-dyes, but nothing more specific. In that case, I grabbed colors, laid them on top of the fabric I had selected for the background and then chose what worked best. The arrangement of colors, however, was deliberate…sprinkling warm next to cool, keeping a balance and, now that I look at it, a diagonal progression of warm colors from top-left to lower-right.

I’ve also been on an autumn kick for a couple of years—I love autumn colors, but with my skin tone, I can’t wear them at all. But my best friend is a gorgeous redhead, and she loves and wears these colors well. In playing and quilting and working together, dyeing fabric together, we’ve managed to cross-pollinate our color sensibilities, and now she’s using my teals, and I’m using her russets and oranges! (Gee….ya think we get along so well because we’re complementary ….ooooh bad pun, ducking and please don’t throw rotten oranges–grin!)

In cases where I’m taking my cues from nature, the pallette is set for me, I just have to look and read it and interpret it in fabric.

I finished “What Secrets Does the Forest Hold” (quilt below) this spring, inspired by the announcement last year that after more than 60 years, they have confirmed that the ivory-billed woodpecker, believed extinct, is still alive in the swamps of Arkansas! I dyed the background fabric specifically for this piece, a murky, swamp green. When I get a better camera, I’ll take another picture, because I really wish you could see the quilting in the background / green: more of the trees in the swamp-forest, and a silhouette of an ivory-billed in flight.

An older quilt, of Casablanca Lilies, has a background of cloth painted with thinned Setacolor paints. But it is thereddish- russet stamens (you know that stuff that stains your clothes?) that contrast so strongly with the green that pops in this quilt.

And that’s plenty for now. Next, I’ll talk about how I use the color wheel when I get “stuck.”

Minou…tried to reply off-blog, but it got bounced…see the comment after Color Study 10…thanks for writing!

For everyone….I try to reply to each comment, because I so appreciate your taking the time to visit my blog. If for any reason you don’t hear from me, it’s probably because something went astray in the ether……

Cheers, Sarah

Hi all….still fighting that cold, so just a beauty break tonight. The past two days we’ve had SPECTACULAR sunsets! Since I was feeling horrid (my cold has, as usual, morphed into a sinus infection), I convinced Joshua to run outside and take pictures.

Instead of quilting today, or working on my blog or anything else remotely fun, I did data-entry for my business /bookkeeping for the past 8 months (UGH…although you can tell that I have put the SMALL back in small business if I can enter all my expenses in one day! and a day when I’m sub-par to begin with!). So tomorrow, I’m hoping to have one last installment in this section of color studies.

OK…I CAN make this color related…..what color scheme is that sunset up above? Triadic/Primary —pink (a pale red) and yellow and pale blue!!! And below…the close up? How about analogous, running from blue to red-violet? Who cares…Mother Nature does it best.

Ooooh….if there is anything I love as much as color, and fabric, it is thread! There are bazillion different threads available to quilters now, and you can use them to great effect. You don’t have to stick to cotton, cotton, cotton. Nor do you have to stick to same-color, same-color as in blue thread on a blue quilt.

Now, I almost NEVER use solid colors in my quilts, but for the colorblock side of the studies I decided it would be a simpler, more clear lesson if I used solid. I decided to take things one step further and make a simple piece to illustrate the effect of mixing different colors of thread on a quilt. Please note, the effect is more obvious when machine quilting because you have a continuous line of color; if you are hand quilting, every other stitch is on the under side of the quilt, which mutes the effect of the color of the thread.

I quilted straight lines at varying distances from each other, then a serpentine stitch to simulate free-motion but keep things consistent.

I used gray thread on the left and right borders. Then in order from left to right used black thread (on the black and the first inch of the colored stripes. I left an inch unstitched for so you can compare the actual color of the fabric with the apparent color once stitched. Then, left to right, the thread colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, gray, and white.

This close up may show better. Or, either click on the photos or right click to try to open in a new window and see a larger image (and hopefully the thread will show up better!).

The easiest thing to notice is that same color thread on same color fabric (blue on blue, red on red) “disappears.” The greater the value (light versus dark) contrast, the more the thread shows. For example, yellow thread shows up a lot on purple, not as much on green or orange.

Next, look at one horizontal band of color and see how your perception of the color changes depending on which color of thread is used. In my Split Complementary (see Color Study 7–scroll down or click on the February 2006 archive button on the right) quilt, I think the dark red-violet tulips are too dark, so when I quilt it I plan to use a lighter magenta or plum thread to decrease the contrast / lighten the perception of the color.

Here’s an example from “Bedtime”, a quilt that is currently travelling to Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago and then (yeah!) on to Quilt Expo in Lyon, France, with the I Remember Mama exhibit. Here’s the full quilt:
Below this photo is a cropped section of the bedpost. I used only one fabric…all the shading is done with thread (and I hope the quality of the photo isn’t awful). Since I don’t have the quilt here, I can’t go take a better picture …drat! Here, try this link to see this quilt on the Quilts website; the color is off–very garish, but it is a sharper photo than mine and you can see the detail better.

Hollis Chatelain is a MASTER of using thread to color her work. In recent years she has been working in monochromatic color schemes with dye: all blue, all yellow, all green. Any additional color that you see is ONLY from the use of thread to color the work. Go browse her site….you’ll be amazed. She is one of my all-time favorite artists.

And a copywright caveat!

Oh…sorry about this. An inquiry today made me think that I ought to note that all the writings and images on this blog are copyrighted (by me). I’m thrilled for you to read them, take notes, even print a copy for your personal use. But please respect my work and copyright and do not use these to teach, hand-out, etc. You know the drill. Thanks!