Showing posts with label Paper Pieced star quilt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paper Pieced star quilt. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Working on Color Again

More paper pieced stars designed by Carol Doak. Sometime last summer I promised myself I would work through most of the stars in her Mariner Stars book. The time is now.

I am still, and probably always will be, uncertain about my color sense. I read books on color but when it comes to hands on, in the eye of this beholder, I am uncertain. I've thrown away a few half stars that were awful. The upper left star is going to go out too. Slowly I'm learn a little. I'll make at least twelve for a quilt, if the interest holds it will be twenty. Every one will be different color combinations but I will use the same background and I want a coherence in value. Learning to combine colors is not easy for me but I think I'm gradually getting better.

Of course these are just squares on the design wall. A final arrangement of stars will probably take great pondering - but that's maybe two months away. This is not the only quilting project going on right now, several smaller projects are in hand.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Paper Piecing Again - 900 pieces


This star is going to take a long time yet -- it was put aside for a couple of months. But I'm back to it and remembering how much I enjoy paper piecing. The diamonds are not sewn together, only pinned. The current arrangement may not be the final one, I have several choices at this early stage. You can see the original that inspired me and if you click the photo, you can see that it says "900 piece quilt" And so it will be in the fullness of time. At some later point I'll put it together in a couple of different ways and perhaps solicit opinions.

Plato said, "Know thyself." I have been trying, with limited success most of my life. As I returned to paper piecing this afternoon I wondered why does someone like "Moi" who really doesn't like fussy quilts so much enjoy these paper piecesd ones -- this and all the Carol Doak stars I've done and ones I hope yet to do [I have her latest set of Mariner's stars]? I had no startling insights except that, as the much fussier quilters know, there's a wonderful sense of accomplishment when the points are crisp and the seams meet as they should. On this one I can use a great variety of fabrics, at this point I've used 34 different ones and will use at least another ten or twelve

So now I've shown a picture of what I'm doing and said it will take a long time yet, so this won't reappear for quite some time but I will be working on it. And may work on another concurrently. Being a Gemini it is impossible to be truly single minded, which is why I'm usually reading three to five books at any one time. This habit of juggling many balls in the air at one time may be why I can barely remember being bored except for brief periods when my work my be boring for a day or two.

P.S. I really don't believe in astrology. But I think something happens when we are fairly young and read that we are a certain type, as I did about being a Gemini. It sounded pretty good and so I chose to believe it and live up to it. Don't most of us pick up those definitions of ourselves from whatever source ["just like her father."]? I tried to explain once that it in the Tibetan system or reincarnation, it doesn't matter whether outsiders believe in reincarnated teachers and high lamas, they are told that from early childhood and that's what they are. So the Dalai Lama IS the Dalai Lama. And I am a Gemini. What are you? And who told you so?