I tried to think of all the colours of snow: blue, purple, dazzling white, shadowed, grey and sparkle and then what colour the sky might be if the sun was just coming up on a winter day. I pulled these colours from my fabric stash.
I had looked at lots of pictures of snow contemplating how to make it look real in fabric. Landscape quilting takes some planning and so I layered the backgound fabric strips representing various snow and sky colours thinking about value and colour Did I have some dark and some medium and some light values?. I knew the sky would have to be deeper blues, or brighter blues than the snow, which is in the lower part of the landscape.
Once I had a rough idea of the background colours I began thinking of the foreground. I knew I wanted a cross country skier and maybe a dog slightly off to one side. On the other side of the landscape I wondered about placing a tree or two for balance. In my head I am thinking of those lovely cross lake skis on the lake close to our home and the utter vastness of the ice.
A design wall can be really helpful at this point. Placing the fabric strips on the design wall allows you to see them close up and from a distance and move them about before sewing.. I always do a rough cutout of at least one element of the foreground to help me with perspective and layout. This element, i my case, the skier should go up on the design wall long before any sewing is done. Playing with the colour layout and the foreground elements over a couple of days ensures you get it right. Can you see my skier? I put him in a Canada jacket with large maple leaves. This probably won't work in the end because the white of the jacket doesn't stand out against the white of the snow very well. Too bad, because I love the maple leaves. The yellow is hopefully going to give a feeling of warmth on a cold winter morning.Stay tuned for how I sew the backgrounds together once I have the design right.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Post your comments here. They will be moderated so they won't show up right away. Post as anonymous, but leave your initials at the end of your post if you want.