Thursday, January 18, 2007

Grid #2: Big Hairy Deal


Yup, "Big Hairy Deal" is the name I christened this quilt from the day I decided to use that "hairy" thread on it. And now it's bound and done. As you can see, I went with my that blue/plum batik, the one fabric that caught my interest and that I kept gravitating back to. Decided not to fight it.

The feedback I got on which fabric might be best was interesting. See this post. No consensus, for starters, and the arguments for each one were all valid, which goes some way to explain why I was having a difficult time deciding between them. In fact, it may be a good argument that there really wasn't one best choice, but that several of those colors would have made a fine ending. As I studied the pictures of each, it was obvious that the color and value of the binding fabric would influence how the whole piece would read. This might not be true of a larger quilt, but one this size (about 14 inches square) is greatly effected. As I noted, the browns brought too much of the brown speckles in the background fabric to the fore, and quite frankly, I was trying to diminish those. I was very tempted to use that light pink - it gave an almost ethereal look - but eventually decided I wanted a stronger wrap to the piece. The biggest problem with the plum and brown batiks was that they had values ranging from dark to light; I'd have to be careful about where I cut if I wanted the same value all the way around. The blue/plum was more evenly batiked, and those spots fit in well with the blotches on the background. Having both blue and plum in the binding also seems to keep the eye on the quilt, not the binding, yet frames it nicely. I was particularly interested in an optical allusion, perhaps because I used a wider 1/2 inch binding: The quilt appears to be floating on top of the binding as if it were appliqued to a slightly larger background. Actually a pretty cool effect. Don't know if the other fabrics would have done that.

Thanks to those of you who took the time to study the pictures and stick your necks out with an opinion!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your resolution looks good! congrats on getting it done.

Sally