Red

Meet Red.

Red needs a back and then I plan to heavily quilt her with straightish lines. The background is a putty coloured Essex Linen and the red parts are Oakshott shot cottons from my ColourBox.



A couple of nights ago, after finishing most, but not all, of my quilting homework that is due anytime soon, I just wanted to make something for me. So I pulled all the warm shades from the stack of Oakshotts and cut two strips from each.



That is the first panel I made and that is the best picture I could take of it until this afternoon. I have so wanted to make something just for me using this stacked strip modern art sort of approach since I made the solids quilt last summer and the solids sewing machine cover recently for my secret partners.



Last night I made two more panels, and I picked the background. It was between this putty colour and the lighter creamy colour of Essex Linen. Today was snow day - we had a storm and over 1 foot of snow, although it is now melting and turning to ice - so I skipped work and spent some of the afternoon piecing the top.



It is really hard for my camera to take pictures of these various warm shades together but just the right amount of sun came out. Now you can see the shine on these 100% cotton shot cottons.



In person they are even shinier.



Those three pictures gave you a close up of each of the coloured panels, they can all be called red but one is more purple and one is more orange and the last one is more red.



This picture shows you  the different warp and weft thread colours and now you can look for that in the other pictures. Besides being thinner and shinier than regular quilting cotton, shot cottons have a lot of depth and interest caused by these different coloured threads, and thus the colours blend well in this kind of block.



There is Red with her colours in the sun, although the background is slightly darker in real life, more like the shady side. I wanted to orient this quilt to have the colours at the top right of the rectangle because that is the place my brain least wants those colours, and the focus of the quilt, to be. It is just a bit unbalanced, unpredictable, on the edge, out there, sassy, which is how I feel about Red.

I am so looking forward to several hours of quilting this one, it is about 60" by 75".

Best,

Leanne