Quilt Odyssey

We got into this fantastic quilt show in Hershey PA. Originally denied for space, we were recently invited as an exhibitor dropped out! So now it's back to the drawing board to refine our brochures, check out the framework for the tent and otherwise make a few new pieces -just to say we did!
The show is 3 weeks away. We've both been working hard to get everything ready.
Phew

Designing Small Stained Glass Panel

I've been having so much fun with the small one piece hearts, I thought I'd try to come up with a small panel that uses them.

After playing around , I finally came up with a 7" square panel set on point. For non quilters, that means oriented like a diamond. I've a knobby English Muffle glass in a sherry color as a border, with a champagne colored background and a wine red free hand heart in the center. Since the background and border are regular, I thought I 'd more or less center an irregular heart as the focal point. It keeps the piece from being too static.



I picked warm Fall colors, but the undertones clashed. The orange red heart looks terrible next to the English muffle maroon in the border. Fortunately, the champagne swirls bridge the gap between the 2 colors.





Small panels, ornaments and sun catchers tend to be viewed up close, so the static versus flowing aspects of the design are more noticeable. In a very large piece, the most important consideration is the effect the colors have on surrounding area.

Homage to Baltimore

Usually I design a new piece of stained glass by drawing a lot, getting frustrated, whining, and playing with glass color combos. This time around, I built the piece earlier than I usually do, since I had limited colors to work with anyway! Most of the stock is at the other studio, but I didn't feel like traveling up there, since I had a class this week in Maryland.

The red roses have an orange cast to them- these are yellow red rather than the grossly named pigeon's blood red. So that meant that most of the colors would have to be in the yellow family in order not to clash.

Baltimore Album Quilt Blocks have several characteristics in common. The designs are often of floral wreaths, baskets and urns of flowers and fruit. The background is usually white. . The flowers are more often red and yellow rather than blue and purples. Of course there's lots of green from the leaves.

So I was pretty set- I used a mus tardy caramel for the basket, indicating the different surfaces by using wispy and textured glass. I had to be careful and select yellow green rather than my usual Kelly or teal greens.

As the red roses are very thick- about 3.8 of an inch in the center, I needed another , thinner element to bridge the visual gap between the roses and the rest of the glass. Without the bright yellow nuggets, the roses would have overpowered the design.

I thought about a white background for the entire square, but this resulted in a static piece. In a fabric quilt, the quilting lines themselves add visual interest to the plain white background. I had some clear swirled glass around that gave me the same unobtrusive texture that fine quilted lines gives to fabric.

I've never seen an album quilt with the elements set on point in a Diamond-in-Square format, much less then sashed in red. But I have seen some with red sashing. So this is really my design variant entirely. Hope you like Homage to Baltimore