Thursday, February 20, 2014

Sample for workshop

I am still on vacation but I brought a few things with me to work on should I have the time. This week I pulled out my fabric and pattern and set to work to make a sample for my Mini Fabricating Class that I will be teaching at the NCQS in May and The Blue Ridge Quilt Festival in July.






One of the patterns that will be available for my students is titled "Mates". I brought four different background fabrics with me that I felt had potential. The birds aren't finished and there will be berries added to the branches as well as snow. However, I wanted to show how a piece changed with the background.






My friend Bonnie Ouellette is dying fabric for me and making kits to go with the pattern for this class. This is the background that will come with the kit and it works quite well. One of the subjects that I cover extensively in my longer Fabricating Nature class is the best selection for your background.






By placing the birds and branch on four different backgrounds you achieve a very different look with each background.






All four of these piece work quite well, that is a phenomena that doesn't alway happen. I think this is happening in this case because it is a scene and each background offers the viewer almost a different composition. Often when we are creating a flower that is not the case. The background must play much less prominence but still present big Wow power and compliment the flower as in the piece below.






I posted the four photos of "Mates" on my Facebook page this week and received a lot of comments. While I will be using #2 for the kits I hope to demonstrate the importance of a well selected background. If you have any preference let me know.

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8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Marilyn, interesting post about the background fabric. Love your cardinals.

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  3. Your birds are lovely and they look good on all the backgrounds.

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  4. I love all the backgrounds. #1 hits home because of all the ice here at the moment. Struck me that by changing the background, you could show the birds in all four seasons. Hope vacation is going well. Have been missing your input in the vision project!

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    1. Judy thanks for missing me I. The visioning project. I will be back soon.

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  5. Best of luck with the class. the samples really do demonstrate what a difference the background can make. think I like the 1st one best.

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    1. Thanks Hilary most prefer the first one but I think each has it's own merit.

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