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Posts Tagged ‘value’

Churn Dash Remix with Stash Bandit, Part 1

Written by Diane Harris on July 25, 2019. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas

I’m away from home for several weeks because I have new twin granddaughters, born in Hong Kong about two weeks ago. It’s been a whirlwind with so many emotions, and it’s been wonderful.

The short story is that everyone is doing great! I’ve had a lot of extra time with my grandsons, ages 3 and 7, as everyone adjusts to new babies. It’s been heaven on earth.

Being away from my studio for three weeks means that I don’t have much to share on the sewing front, but it has given me an opportunity to create some virtual designs in EQ8. In case you’re not familiar, EQ8 is  quilt design software from The Electric Quilt Company. It’s an incredibly powerful tool and I design most of my quilts with it.

I dreamed up something called Churn Dash Remix last week in order to demonstrate some concepts about color and design while I’m away from my machine. I’m using the simple Churn Dash block as my starting point. Just above you’ll see a basic version with a nine-patch grid so that each of the three columns of patches is of equal width.

There is a lot you can do with just color and value before you ever alter the proportions of the block. Just above, the background patches become more important with zesty teal and a large-scale hot pink/orange. So simple, but effective.

Changed it up a little for a whole new look. Yellow adds spice to just about anything.

Now let’s rearrange the value placement. Value is just the lightness or darkness of the fabrics compared to their neighbors. The block above hardly looks like a Churn Dash, but it is. All I’ve done is place the lights and darks in different spots.

Here I’ve substituted reddish-pink roses for the aqua, and I love it! Plus-sign designs have been hot for a while. Have you seen them popping up in magazines, books and on social media? Who knew that a humble Churn Dash could masquerade as a plus sign?!

One more variation, above. Before we leave these proportions, let’s look at a few scrappy versions.

Here’s a tip:

One easy way to elevate your block to something special is to swap the normally light background for a dark one.

The navy blue above is a good example. The block is more exciting just by letting the Churn Dash shapes be lighter than the background and almost glow against the dark blue.

The same block with pinks instead of yellows. Here’s another tip:

The most important thing in a scrappy block is that the values in the different areas are similar.

See how all the dark background fabrics above read in a similar way? Nothing sticks out as a lot lighter. Same for the pinks: They’re all about the same medium value.

But here is what people sometimes do:

See how two of the background patches, even though they are blue, are much lighter? That doesn’t work in this case. The backgrounds need to be similar in value if they’re to work together as one.

You’ll notice that some of the pinks are more peachy and some are more purply, but that’s a good thing! The value is much more important than the shade of pink. Variety in the shades of pink makes the block interesting and engaging as long as the pinks are similar in value, which is just lightness or darkness.

Here’s the block in scrappy navy and aqua. Love it!

Everything we’ve done has just been with color and value. Wait until you see what happens when we change up the block proportions in the next post! So much fun!

~Diane~

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Everybunny: Scrap Quilt Lessons

Written by Diane Harris on March 27, 2018. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas

I always pull out Everybunny this time of year—it’s one of my favorite finishes. There was a lot to learn about scrap quilts when I made it. Let’s pull some lessons from it. Today will be #1 and I’ll do a little series on making better scrap quilts.

Everybunny, designed and made by Diane Harris for Quiltmaker March/April ’16

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Impromptu Quilt Guild Program

Written by Diane Harris on July 24, 2017. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas

I needed to produce a program on short notice for my local quilt group recently, and I’d like to share what I came up with. This is good for those times when your guild’s speaker has to cancel late in the game.

These are 3.5″ patches I played with while making a baby quilt about a year ago. I had a good time arranging and rearranging them until I came up with a combination I liked.

It was a short leap to realize I could cut similar patches and teach quilters about several important concepts at once. I called this program “Let’s Take a Trip Around the World.”

I cut up the fabric from a bunch of header cards, also known as waterfall cards, making no effort to coordinate them. It’s better if they do not “match” at all. I cut 3.5″ patches in different values, i.e. lights, mediums and darks.

I created a stack of patches for each person. They looked something like those shown above. Not especially appealing, are they?

Even though the fabrics didn’t coordinate—didn’t have much in common at all, everyone was able to make wonderfully attractive block arrangements as we focused on this task:

Create contrast between each fabric and its neighbors.

In other words, be sure you can see the difference between the fabrics that touch each other.

This is a good example: Each fabric contrasts with its neighbors in some way.

You can create contrast in many ways:

  • Light vs. dark
  • Busy pattern vs. plain pattern
  • Large motifs vs. small motifs
  • Motifs widely scattered vs. motifs densely packed together
  • Color, sometimes! This is the last thing you should consider. It’s the least important!

People came up with some terrific combinations. When the fabrics don’t coordinate, you’re forced to look for connections or contrasts apart from color. Take a look by scrolling through some of the blocks.

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Aren’t they fabulous? The next task was to create a layout with low contrast. In other words, select fabrics that blend into each other so there is very little contrast. Keep in mind that everyone had to work with the patches in her little stack. Some stacks worked better than others.

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When they finished the 3.5″ exercise, I demonstrated how to make Scrappy Trips blocks, a technique popularized by Bonnie Hunter of quiltville.com. Not only did they learn how to make the blocks, they could analyze how the contrast between the fabrics played out in these new creations.

     

      

 

I had the chance to sew the patch rows together a few days later. I didn’t intend to start a new quilt, but I really like where this is going. I’ll be adding to it soon.

 

I had a really good time on this
Trip Around the World!

Thank you for coming with me.

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Patchwork: When the Wrong is Right

Written by Diane Harris on June 21, 2017. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas

Some three decades ago, Jo Morton was just beginning to teach in our home state of Nebraska. She came to our fledgling guild and taught us to make Log Cabin blocks with strips that finished at 1/2″.

There weren’t any reproduction fabrics in those days, so Jo was inventing ways to make new fabrics look old. One of the secrets she shared with us was this:

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The Value of Value

Written by Diane Harris on April 10, 2017. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas, Trunk Shows

I wish I’d been the first to say it.

“Color gets all the credit, but value does all the work.”

I don’t know who was the first to say it, but if there were a Patchwork Bible, this statement would equate to Genesis 1:1.

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