Monday, December 04, 2006

Step eight...

...Joining the blocks together, to form the borders. I'm using two rows of pinwheels to get the width and effect I want. My pressing system broke down a bit at this stage. I still had nice opposing seams everywhere, but when I went to spin those centers, they were all going in the opposite direction from the rest of the seams. Oh, well. It didn't appear to cause a real problem, but I think the next time I sew pinwheels block to block, I'll consider pressing all seams open.

When I arranged the borders around my central panel, vision and reality met, and they were not the same. Time for my repeated rant of wishing I could envision more accurately how my ideas will look executed. I caught myself hedging and doubting myself. I'm afraid the border is too wide and overpowering - it's reading pretty bright. Don't know if I like the scale of the leaf fabric in the center panel - too large? Don't know, don't know, don't know! A part of me says just let it sit on the design wall and work on something else for awhile. Probably good advice. So this is how I left it at the end of last week.


I had a feeling that I needed to cut those birch trunks and arranged them over it, that they might make all my misgivings disappear. So I did that this afternoon and indeed, it totally changed my feelings. This is a tentative arrangement, but if nothing else, I can see that I don't have to worry about the scale of the leaf print.


3 comments:

margaret said...

Those trunks really do make a difference! What would happen if they spread more into the borders? Looking forward to seeing what happens next...

Felicity Grace said...

The trunks look amazing against the background and border. I like this very much!

Anonymous said...

Hi Sheila, I just opened your new leaf work in Photoshop and tried cropping it -- I think the problem you sense is in the proportion of the border to the center area -- they are too much the same. If you make the border only one square wide and then add a second border in a darker reddish tone - to relate to the darks in the center - it really takes on presence. And accentuates the vertical aspect. Can you make the same squares with a main fabric that's similar, but darker toned? This has come together so quickly - congratulations. Is only "normal" that you'd have a hitch in the process once you see it actually together.

Just my thoughts, hope they help. Is the old thing of enjoying the process, easy only when it's going well.......

Sally