Art Quilts by Kathy York

No. 4

46" x 46"

This one...working with a plan, and then the reality looks different. It is disappointing. I am obviously still not fluent in the language of commercial solids.  No. 4 is the confluence of two ideas. I wanted big blocks of different blues interacting with colored stripes running through them and the intersections changing colors to present the idea of transparency.  My 9 blue blocks do NOT look like 9 blue blocks. The blues appear random, but they are not if you look closely. However, it was supposed to be obviously 9 big blue blocks, so that was a fail. The transparency is okay, but I have seen much better attempts than this one. To be fair, I opted to use only colors that I had in my stash, so it limited the choices a bit. 

Here is the layout of the color stripes.

Then I started cutting out the blues and did not have enough. 

I usually shop locally first, and then I turn to online stores. To purchase the colors I want, I have a set of sample colors for 4 different manufactures of solid fabrics.  Unfortunately, those sample fabrics are TINY little squares of color (as you can see from the tiny blue squares on my design wall here). It is challenging to say the least. And, though I think I am in control of the colors I want, I am frequently choosing colors that do not please me. Perhaps I need to be more flexible.... The quilt is very nice, it is just different than what I was going for....

On to the piecing of the half square triangles...

Ironically, I seriously love this half completed version of the quilt.  I love how the half square triangles look like they are disintegrating from the bottom of the quilt where the square patches are still whole. 

Earlier on, it looked like this...I started piecing before my new blue fabrics arrived:

And, as an abstract, I like this version the best. I wish that I had stopped here. Fortunately, I can still make THIS one, at some time in the future. It is definitely an idea for my series that I would like to pursue! Even the 'failures' lead to other ideas to follow, which is making this series of work really fun for me!

The quilting. I layered this one with the top from No. 2 to created a two-sided quilt. I planned to use long linear lines to quilt it.  Unfortunately, even with really good basting, I was having an impossible time getting the front and back to stay lined up. And, the spots in the corners of the front and back, the spot where the seam allowances are maximized, were extremely bulky. So, I am going to write another post about the quilting.  Coming soon....