Wednesday 23 July 2008

Journalling and crazy quilting

Following on from the journalling post the other day I have found some time to work on the colour studies suggested by Sharon. The instruction was to gather 1" squares of a predominant colour, a different colour each day to reflect your feelings on that day.






















The first day I did this it was dull and rainy so I decided to scour my magazines for shades of grey. I tried to look for all types of grey - red grey, blue greys, green greys........


The next day I looked at complimentaries on the colour wheel - yellow and violet. I found it harder to find samples of these two colours in the magazines.


















It may be because of the ramshackle way I had cut out the pieces but I didn't particularly like the block arrangement on the right hand side. I preferred the slightly staggered arrangement on the left.

















Instead of using magazines clippings on the third day I went through my stack of painted and mixed media surfaces as well as photographs and cut squares of all the reds I could find. On the page I arranged them from (warm) yellow reds through to (cold) blue reds. Hopefully that comes over in the pic above. I think I can see I was feeling brighter because the sun was put, hence the red.
















My fourth choice, on another bright, blowy day, was shades of green, again taken from my stash of painted/textured papers, photos, handmade paper and the fabric they use to make hats! This time I arranged the greens from light (maybe more yellowy) to dark (more blue or red) greens.

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I still have one more day to do this exercise and then have to take it further by matching to fabrics and threads.

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A few days ago Lesley blogged about a crazy quilt base she had prepared. You may remember that Kate sent me a bag of scraps which I was desperate to play with and, inspired by Lesley, yesterday I had a play. I was too impatient to turn lots of little edges so I bondawebbed the pieces to a square of cotton, leaving the edges raw.






















I don't think the colours above are too accurate as the whole assemblage is a little more into the orange/brown spectrum. My plan is to maybe free machine all ove to hold everything together and then to use embroidery and beads to decorate. I may not get back to this piece for a few weeks but at least I now have a piece ready to pick up whenever I feel inclined.

8 comments:

Mrs Moog said...

Your crazy quilting looks fab Julie _ it'll look great when you've embellished it too. My patchwork has been neglected this week but the school hols have started so I should have time to do some more.
I love your sketchbook pages - those colour blocks should be framed!!

xxxx

sharon young said...

You're my kind of girl, Julie, love the crazy quilt block, I'd have done exactly the same re bondaweb:-)
What a great post and so inspiring to see all your colour pages and how you've chosen to put them together, just perfect for me as I'm doing my colour module at the moment. Thanks for sharing it in detail.

Gina said...

I love all those colour pages Julie. They are so inspirational.

jo horswill said...

These colour study collages are wonderful...the greys are so calming, the reds exciting and the greens, tranquil. Beautiful.

silverpebble said...

Beautiful colour collages Julie - I love looking at these. I used to make greetings cards like this. I once did a red one for Mr P - all squares, but one was a heart. Sounds cheesy but it looked OK.

Oh, and Mr Guinea has turned up! He was in one of Miss P1's handbags - yes, she already has a small collection.

Mai-Britt Axelsen said...

I just love it - great inspiration, Julie - Thanks for sharing, I'll start a collection soon ;O)

margaret said...

1" squares in a colour -- what a great exercise, especially doing it day after day!

Frances said...

julie I love the colour studies in your journal,