Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Fast Friday Quilt

During my Internet travels, I came across Fast Friday Quilts. On the 4th Friday of each month a quilt challenge is offered. Participants make a "fast" (in a week) quilt that follows the Color Concept and Composition Concept listed, then post their quilts to the blog and other members comment on the quilts. The group is closed, so I decided to just do these challenges on my own and to post them to my blog. I view it as a way to practice and improve my machine stitching and quilting skills and committing myself to putting them on my blog, will push me to get the quilts done in a timely manner.

The Friday, Feb. 27 Challenge #30:
Color Concept: Split Opposites Color Harmony on the color wheel
Composition Concept: S Curve
The challenge hostess, A Carole Grant, had so many interesting links to read about the S Curve that I got a lot out of the challenge before even starting my quilt. And then those links lead to other links and I ended up learning about drawing and seeing the human figure as a series of opposing convex curves (this is really going to help me in my sketching).

I found a photo of a dancer and I could see the S Curve in her body. I decided to use this as the subject for my quilt. I enlarged the photo and traced the dancer. In tracing the dancer's body, I could really see the opposing convex curves I'd just read about. I cut out the body parts and used them as a rough pattern.

This is my finished piece. I used the Split Opposites Color Harmony of Red with Yellow-green and Blue-green. In focusing my attention on the S Curve, I kind of short changed the color harmony and used a lot of black and white (which doesn't change the color harmony). I used this quilt to practice my free motion stitching -- as you can see I don't have a lot of control. I tried to do the big S Curve in free motion red stitching but it didn't show up and was rather ragged, so I showed the S with the ribbons. It's hard to see, but I also did some S curve stitching in the black background.

My first Fast Friday Quilt challenge. I'm so pleased with myself that I actually completed it and got it on this blog.

2 comments:

Dreamcicle Journeys said...

Hi Martha, I really like your "S" curve Friday Quilt. It has lots of movement and color. What a fun exercise. I'll look forward to seeing more of these. Paula

Joni said...

Hi Martha,
I am a member of Fast Friday Fabric Challenge, and I think you really interpreted our challege in a beautiful way! I would be nice if you could join our group, it usually opens to new members in the early fall. I'll be looking at your blog from time to time to see you wonderful work. Joni