Thursday, September 27, 2012

Yet Another Class...

Last Saturday, the Carquinez Strait Stitchers Guild in Benicia presented a very cool class taught by Christine Barnes. Christine is an awesome color expert, and her various classes produce quilts which create the qualities of transparency, opalescence, luster, and depth merely by using different fabrics. This class was entitled "Luminosity", and, in Christine's words is described thusly: "When you surround a relatively small area of warm, intense color with a larger area of cooler, less intense, darker color, your quilt will appear to glow, as if light and warmth are coming from behind." I found this to be totally fascinating subject, and I'm really looking forward to seeing if I "got" the concept when my quilt is finished... and I won't know whether I succeeded until it is, indeed, finished. The tension mounts...

Here we are... hard at work - it was so much fun to see the gorgeous piles of bright fabrics stacked up at everyone's work station! Christine was very generous with one-on-one time, helping us chose our fabrics and giving us valuable tips and info on why to chose one fabric over another. That's Christine in the purple vest, on the right...



The first step is to construct 16 blocks that consist of a 6" center square of bright, warm colors, surrounded by a 4" border of cooler, darker colors...


The next step is to cut these squares apart into four pieces, and then piece them back together again using four sections from different squares. The center pieces and border pieces should share similar color characteristics, and the resulting new squares will produce a luminescent quality. In theory. Christine's quilts were quite eye-popping, and I hope mine comes close. I'll begin the slicing and dicing activities tomorrow, and should have the results in a few days. Stay tuned...

1 comment:

Healing Woman said...

It makes sense that the lighter squares would "pop" in intensity and color when surrounded by the cooler colors. This class looks like fun and a lot of work as well. I love material of all kinds and seeing it together like this is exciting.