Lost and found. Hard and soft

We got our new lesson for my master class. This time it is about different kinds of edges in a quilt. The edges between fabrics can be sharp or fuzzy is how I interpret the lesson. Sharp is achieved by strong contrast between the fabrics and fuzzy with less contrast. The soft edges leaves some things up to the imagination of the viewer instead of spelling it all out.

I have had a little experience with this. A few years ago I made a blended quilt. For this kind of quilt some of the edges blur together due to the fabrics chosen and the design is harder to see. I found making this quilt a challenge since generally as quilters we chose fabrics that have a lot of contrast to make the design stand out. In a blended quilt parts stand out and some do not (lost and found edges). My quilt was made of reds and greens and tans and some of the stars stand out and some do not. It was made as a Christmas quilt, but hangs year round because I like it so much. A blended quilt uses a lot of large scale fabrics to help create the effect.

 

 

Even in my master class I have had a little bit of experience with this concept although at the time I had no idea I was using it. My Misty Morning Piper quilt had sharp and fuzzy edges. So as soon as EB gave us our latest lesson the thing that came to mind was how fog creates this effect in nature. Some of the edges are lost and some are found.

 

 

 

 

 

When I received my critique of my smoke stack quilt from last month EB had suggested that I might be able to continue my “energy” series with September’s lesson. So that is what I decided to do. This time I wanted to combine oil rigs and wind turbines. Here are my sketches that I sent to EB.

My original sketch with windmills barely visible in the background. This is a bit hard to show in a sketch. I think this might be easier to do in fabric than with pencil and paper!

 

I used the reverse filter in Photoshop to see how it would look with the values reversed.

I wonder what EB is going to say. What do you think? Do you like the original sketch or the reverse better? Have you ever done a quilt with lost and found edges?

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Linking up to Nina-Marie.

Chris