Value at Work in my Quilts

I got the red border on. I like it better.

But the pinwheels don't show up well.

They didn't show up much better on the original on I made.

I love the fabrics in both quilts, but should have stuck with the two-color scheme. The pattern got broken up when the values of the blues I used varied too much.

I have read about color value in quilt books, but I have not thought consciously about it when putting together fabrics for my quilts. The Irish Chain quilt (below) that I was working on for a challenge (what year was that?), and still have not finished, shows good contrast and use of value.

You can read more about color value in quilting

by clicking HERE.

Since I use stash fabrics in my quilts, I often don't have enough of the fabric to make all the blocks the same. In the Irish chain, most of the big yellow areas are whole pieces with the corner squares appliqued on, but one is pieced. Can you see the difference in the two pictures?

Value is what's wrong with the quilt below.

In Pepper Cory's class sample (sorry you'll have to scroll down through the linked blog post, but the photo is worth it) the background fabrics create diagonal lines through the quilt. My background fabrics were too close in value and the drama of the diagonal lines is lost.

That's why I have not finished it?

I have to say though that Sashiko is really fun, and I cannot think of a better way to get young people working with needle and thread. (See Sophie Rubin on Quilting Arts by clicking this link.)

 I wish the preprinted panels were easy to find.

Let me know if you have a good website for Sashiko supplies, and I'll promote it here on the blog.

Last, for this post, is a little bitty quilt top I made from some scraps I found in Mom's (Linda Brannock's) discards. No lesson about value here; I was just making something useful from scraps, but you can see value at work in it too.

Fours sides on

This quilt top is so hard to photograph!  I don't know if it is me getting pickier about photo quality, or the lighting, insufficient camera, or these colors are just difficult to photograph, but I want to do better, but how to get clear crisp shots?  Time for a camera upgrade? Should I make the leap to SLR?  I have my eye on the Nikon 3100.  Any advice?

I am celebrating the completion of hand-quilting on the pink monster.  As soon as I get my machine free-motion anxiety under control, I will tackle the border and binding so I can celebrate having all three of my declared UFOs done for the year.  Last year I was 0 for 5 and this year I will be, as soon as I bind the pink monster, 3 for 3.

Irish Chain

This was my WHOLE weekend.

I am exhausted, but realize I need to add another row and column.  At 50"x60," it is a little too small to be very useful.  At least that's what the voices in my head are saying.