From Ugly to ?

>> Sunday, May 23, 2010

I know at least a couple readers made it through last night's long post on process, so I better follow through with some process posting :)

Up first...

This piece started as an effort to use up some squares from the Portrait Gallery quilt. I thought I'd piece them together and create a wall hanging. Which I did, sort of, but I hate. I think it looks ugly. The colors don't sparkle, it's not that interesting to me, and I can't imagine hanging it anywhere. So I folded it up and let it drift to the bottom of my works-in-progress pile.

I think it's now time to do something with it, but I'm not yet sure what that something will be. I'm thinking of cutting it up and refashioning it to something else altogether, a la Jacquie's Urban Garden quilt. I think I'd chop it into strips and squares and add some new fabric and see where it goes. Alternatively, I was thinking about cutting it into lots of little squares and putting them together and see where that goes. This morning I started wondering whether I needed to immerse it in a sea of other colors. so chop it (in whatever way) and add in tons of other colors. Maybe I'm just not that into this color combo and adding some warmer tones would spice it up a bit.

I'm all ears for suggestions. What would you do with it? I'm game for radically remaking this, and it could yield a wallhanging, a new quilt, or anything. And if it doesn't turn into anything I like, I'm okay with that too. In other words, if it turns out to be a rotted piece of fruit, well that can be interesting, and if it turns into delectable fruit salad, that's a bonus. It's an experiment, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

4 comments:

Anonymous May 23, 2010 at 10:48 AM  

The easiest, quickest fix would be to remove the outer brown border and add another border using that creamy yellow that's in the second block. I'd say about twice the width of the inner pieced border. It would add some sparkle and separate the two borders so they don't blend so much.

If you want to get more radical, take off both borders, separate the blocks, and chop them into quarters, then rearrange and sew them together in a Bento Box-like arrangement (opposite corners the same in each block). I would still add some of that yellow for more sparkle.

Christina May 23, 2010 at 12:39 PM  

I was thinking the same thing, that brown is just not working, and you do need more colors to work with. Yellow is the natural choice but oranges blues and moe greens would perk it up too. I like those little pears and would hate for them to be obliterated by cutting up, can you preserve them somehow if you cut?

Jilly May 23, 2010 at 10:00 PM  

Yep, I would change the border, too. And if you really want pop, add a compliment to the blue or green -- so red or orange (or a red-y orange? or a brown with a red undertone instead of a blue undertone might be all you need). A yellow to match the yellow in it would work, too.

Cheryl Arkison June 11, 2010 at 3:31 PM  

You could use it as a strip, left of center, so to speak, in a larger piece. Maybe with some of that green or blue as the rest of the top?

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