Morris Tiles blog hop

Tammy Silvers of Tamarinis, a fellow Island Batik designer, is celebrating her new Signature Collection, Morris Tiles, designed by Kathy Engle.  She asked me to join in and while I couldn't squeeze in time to sew up a new sample in those new fabrics, I did fall into the EQ rabbit hole, playing with existing designs and new digital fabric swatches.

It may not surprise you that from all those options, those few blue/teal fabrics  caught my eye.  I've been looking for the perfect recoloring for Starlight Plaid for some time.  

The original quilt in greys and red was very bold.  These fabrics make a softer version. You can see how the prints blend a bit to soften the edges in this close-up.

Trying to do justice to the whole collection, I went back to the oranges, which made me think of fall, which led me to Leafy Pathways.   A customer at the local quilt shop once told me every quilt needs a "party girl" fabric, a fabric that sticks out just a little to liven up everything else up.  I think the pop of teal fits the bill. 

The prints add a lot of texture and interest to a simple design.

Finally, because I gave the teals a quilt all their own in Starlight Plaid, I thought I'd try to give the rest of the colors a quilt all their own as well.  Here is Connecting Geese, reimagined with a light background instead of the original dark.

The colours in the collection are strong, as you saw in Leafy Pathways.  Pairing them with a light background gives them a lighter touch.

I encourage you to visit these blogs to find more Morris Tiles inspiration:

Tamarinis

Kate Colleran Designs

Tourmaline & Thyme Quilts

Katie Mae Quilts

If you would like details about the specific fabrics I used in my recoloring, you can find those here.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

When you make a purchase from my Etsy shop from a link in this post, I may receive a refund of some of the transaction fees Etsy usually charges me for a sale.  There is no additional cost to you.

I'd love to meet your guild!

Happy New Year!  It's still January, so I think the wishes still apply :)  What have you been up to so far this year?

I've been dealing with a kitchen renovation (very excited about that!) between blizzards and a record-breaking cold snap, learning the ropes as the new president of the Ames Quilt Guild (it's a bit more than I expected), sewing two quilts I can't share with you until next winter (an exercise in keeping my lips zipped) and planning a mystery quilt-along (details to follow soon).  So, not much I could chat about here on the blog. Well, I could share about the kitchen. It's not quilty, but let me know if that interests you.

I have also had a lovely couple of evenings joining two separate guilds on Zoom to present a lecture slide show.  The talk was going the be about the B's of quilting: backgrounds, blocks, borders, bindings and backs.  It mostly is, but fabric selection needed attention too and that ruined my "B" theme.

I shared about looking at a quilt on a pattern cover and reimagining it in some way, through fabric choices and various little tweaks.  I spent a considerable amount of time digging through my quilt photos to choose just the right ones to illustrate the possibilities, and drawing more possibilities in EQ, because let's face it, I have more ideas than I have time or resources to actually sew up! 

Here's a peek of what I suggested you could do with Shiny Blossoms:

Crossings came up a couple of times, including in a discussion about fudge factors in pieced borders.

If you think your guild might like to dive into this topic with me, I'd love to visit virtually (or in person if you're in Central-ish Iowa).  There's more info about my three current lecture offerings here.

Meanwhile, I'll be working on those quilts I can't share, enjoying not having to wrestle with the drawers in my kitchen, and virtually reimagining existing designs in new fabrics.  A fellow Island Batik designer asked me to join her in a blog hop celebrating her new signature collection so I'm playing with digital fabric swatches.  Come back tomorrow to see what I come up with (yes, I'm a bit last-minute...)

Color Value Woes Part 1

A couple of months ago, I happily cut into fabrics for a new quilt.  I wanted to stretch a bit and use a background that wasn't very light or very dark.  I don't have a picture of the yardage, but there's the fabric all cut out.

I love the red, orange and yellow together, and that background is rich but not too dark or light.  Looks good so far.

Next there was sewing and trimming.  So much trimming.  I think the trimming monster looks pretty good in these colors. 

Trimming monster

 The units look pretty good too.

Once all those geese were sewn and trimmed, the pace increased and blocks came together quickly.

Things were looking good and I was excited to sew blocks into a quilt top.

This is where I started to worry.  Something is not quite right here, but I thought adding the sashing might pull it all together.

Nope.  The shapes in the yellow blocks seem to fade into the background.  This fascinates me, because the yellow seemed strong enough when looking at individual blocks.  Let's see that again:

That looks sharp enough, but put them beside the much stronger red and orange blocks, and they look weak and ineffective.

It all comes down to color value.  Color value refers to relative lightness or darkness.  If you look at fabrics through a red filter, or apply a black and white filter to an image, you'll see the color value rather than the color.  Here's the first photo in this blog post with a grayscale filter applied.

When viewed in black and white, there isn't much difference between the background and the yellow (top left square).

Here's the design wall in grayscale.  

You can make out the shapes of the yellow fabric, but they are much, much lighter than the red or orange, which makes them fade into the background by comparison.

In color, you can see the yellow, but because it isn't as strong as the red and orange the design looks unbalanced.

This was meant to be the pattern cover quilt, but I don't think it's going to help sell the design!  I'll need to pick out different fabrics for a cover quilt.  This one is headed to the UFO stack until I decide whether to finish it as is (it will still be cozy on the couch) or try to find an alternate fabric to substitute for the yellow.

Have you ever viewed your fabrics in grayscale before making your final selection?  I knew about this, but never bothered with it.  This project and Color Value Woes Part 2, which I'll share in another post, are encouraging me to add that little step to my fabric shopping.  Cell phone cameras make it easy now, so I won't be skipping this step again!

I'm off to sew now, using fabrics that do not blend into each other!

Happy quilting,

Joanne

****UPDATE03/03/2025:  For more discussion of colour value and how to use grayscale to check it, read this new post.