Art Quilt - Designing Details

I have been continuing work on my latest art quilt. As I work on it, I reflect on some decisions I made in the designing of it that might be of interest to you. When you look at my pattern, you see a lot of straight lines. Those lines represent seams that appear when I sew my small fabric pieces together. In a painting, you don't see those seam lines. I actually like the look of those seams in my work because it gives interest and shows how I use fabric to create a fabric painting. I also often use the seam lines to direct the viewer's eye to the focal point. However, those same seams can be detracting to the piece as well. To keep that from happening, I make sure when designing that I carry the same fabric or value across some of those seam lines so that the eye concentrates on the colours and values instead of the seam. If you get up close to the art quilt, you definitely see the seams but when you stand back, you see the image. That's my goal. 

This is why some of the fabric pieces are tiny. You might wonder why those tiny pieces are important. They may help to transition the values or colours into other values and colours or they may be needed to make the shape of something more believable. 

When designing, you will also note that I don't use a lot of plain fabric. That is also intentionally done. I always try to choose fabric with a small pattern or gradient colours or different but harmonized colours in them. This gives added texture to the work which makes it more interesting and believable as a landscape. I have had people ask me if I painted certain pieces of my art and when they look closer they are surprised it is fabric. 

                                                                                                       

I even use some patterned fabric in my skies since when you see my work from a distance you can't see the patterns but just subtle changes in the clouds.

I've finished the foreground area of the quilt and am excited to be working on the background and the sky sections. I always love it when I can begin to use other colours. The greens were getting tiring so now I am using darker colours for the background, some oranges for the colourful trees between the evergreens and blues, whites and greys for the sky.