Quilted Symphony, almost finished

Really?  It has only been 2 days since my last post?   I feel like its been a week or more!

Where did I leave off two days ago?  A reminder.

 To proceed, I had to chose colours to fill in the entire upper right section and part of the lower left section.  According to directions, both of these pieces were the same colour.  Well, this is what I originally decided on.

The two blue and orangy pieces, upper right and lower left, are the pieces to be added.  I was just auditioning another piece for the lower left corner, and that is why the darker brown piece was there.  I liked this but there was something missing that I just couldn't put my finger on.   The whole piece just lacked something, so I made another two pieces.

Instead of blue with bright orange additions, I decided to try something a bit darker.

The above sample just took the drama right out of the wall hanging completely; the whole wall hanging just lost something.  So then I wondered what it would look like if I made a third set, using the blue and a green, not making it but just putting some green fabric on my bright orange fabric in the corners.

Nope. Green didn't work either.   I kept switching fabrics over and over and finally I just put it away.  I showed the two sets to to some friends, (blue and bright orange and blue and the sort of browny orange fabric), both above.

We got to talking about both fabric and why neither seemed to do the job and then something hit me.  I loved the brightness that the blue and bright orange brought to the wall hanging, but, there was no movement in the piece.

Look at this photo again.

When we first look at the piece, our eyes are naturally drawn to the darkest area first which is down near the bottom and then our eyes stops there.  There is no trail of brown leading us up to the top of the wall hanging.  We are stuck at the bottom with the dark browns until slowly, our eyes are drawn to the bright orange colours.  But, there is no fluidity or movement in the piece.  It is sort of a jagged staccato movement.  And our brains don't like that.  It likes movement.  

You will notice that on either side of my centre blue and green piece, there are narrow bands that transition from a dark brown at the bottom to a pale green/yellow at the top.  Had I had them transition from a very dark brown to a medium dark brown, I might have gotten the movement I wanted.  When looking at the front cover of Gloria Loughman's book you can see how the dark shapes travel all over the piece, taking your eyes with them.  Movement.

My dilemma?   If you look at the photos again, the blue fabric and darker fabric, it does create movement, but it really dulls down the wall hanging and just doesn't make it exciting enough.

 I really liked the blue and bright orange pieces but how can I get movement from the bottom to the top?  Well, I tried adding little swirls here and there, little nobs of dark colour here and there, and finally, I just I tried something that I could live with, and this is the end result. So, this

 became this:

 

A bit much with the dots but it looks pretty good.  I can live with it and it does look much nicer in person.  I just need to add the final lower left corner, and two borders, a bit of quilting, and I am done.  I learned so much from this one piece!   I am ever so glad that I decided to do it.  This will forever be a huge learning piece for me.  I learn best by doing, and I learned alot about movement and how to create it in what I am trying to do.  Enough for now.


Somewhere in all of this, I decided it was necessary to make some quiches.  Ham, cheese, onion and red pepper.  They were great!  Still some in the freezer!

And of course, another walk in our most favourite, Cavendish National Park where we came across another visitor, or more likely, an inhabitant.

And yes, another weekend, another large 2 day storm.  This one sounds quite nasty as it might contain alot of freezing rain.  Sounds like it might be good stitching weather!

I should also have time to finish up a little experiment I've been working on.  Making my own "beads" for lack of better description.  So come back to see if I have them done!

Enjoy!