Did you read Amy’s post on Value : Leading the Eye? Wow that’s some great info. Taking all that I learned so far, I thought I’d just show you a bit of my process for making my quilt.
I started with the design you see above. This is a slight variation of a common block pattern. I’ve always known it as Jacob’s Ladder, but you may know of another name for it. I say this is a variation, because it is commonly seen with four patches, rather than nine patches.
Anyways, I had seen one made with these cute little nine patches in an old quilting book, and I’ve had it on my back burner for a long time. When I was tasked with making a quilt that represented value, I immediately thought of this one.
This block above is how I decided to arrange my values. (This diagram is actually one ‘block’) The first diagram is four of these put together to create one diamond)
I went with light, medium, and dark, as my basic value separations.
Here you can see how a bunch of these blocks put together with this value arrangement will look. (btw, on Friday, I will be exploring so many, many, different ways that you could use this same pattern for a completely different look)
Now the fun part! Choosing fabrics! My color inspiration come to me in a rush one morning. I can’t remember if there was anything to trigger it, but I had been puzzling over the above design for a few days, yet not knowing what colors I would use.
And then that morning I just knew! The darks would be a mix of black and teal/navy prints. The medium would be medium valued pinks and yellows, and the lights would be light pinks and yellows.
I pulled out a bunch of fabrics and sorted them casually by groups of light medium and dark.
Now I tried changing my photo, as I learned from Leila, and you can see that my sorting worked fairly well, although the mediums and darks blend into each other somewhat. I was ok with that though, because the difference in hues, (bright pinks versus teals) would help with keeping the design from being muddied.
(also, I’m a fan of mixing things up abit, so messing up on the values just a bit here and there adds interest, right?!)
And here’s my first block, made with my chosen fabrics! As you can likely see by now, this entire quilt is made up of two basic blocks. A half square triangle, and a 9-patch! Easy-peasy!! (Well, let’s not mention that those little squares are 1 1/2″!)
I love this color combination. It's amazing how things look when you look at it in B&W!
Oh, such little squares! I love the colors you chose.
Thanks for that clarification. I love your quilt so much that I had to keep going back to look it yesterday after you first posted it!
I love the fabrics! You have an amazing eye as always. That quilt had to be a ton of work. I can't wait till your next post. All of my rulers like yours are broken off LOL…
Thank you SO much for sharing your "vision" and final product. You have a great eye and an easy way to describe your thinking. Thanks so much!
I am really enjoying this series.
I just adore this quilt. I love how your choice of colors makes this quilt feel so modern, but the blocks are completely traditional. Great info on value too! Thanks as always.
I feel as though I'm learning a lot from this series. Thanks for sharing your process. The quilt is so lovely!
Thanks for this – I'd been admiring (okay, drooling over) your quilt since the start of the series and didn't quite manage to puzzle out its construction.
Beautiful. Having not quilted for years, your gorgeous work is motivating me to dig into the long put-away stash, dust off the Bernina and start sewing! 🙂
I think your graphic of the pattern is so helpful. My mind broke the pattern down into the small blocks I'm accustomed to rather than the large 1/4 that you identified. It's good practice to retrain my eye and go forward to see a bigger picture.
Wow…such a great quilt and a great post!
This is gorgeous!! I'm definitely going to have to try it!