Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Quilting Along with Leah Day - Week 20

I'm still playing catch-up from our vacation in the Canadian Rockies. We ended the trip at the Fairmont Hotel on Lake Louise. This is an image taken by my husband from our room early in the morning before breezes and canoes disturbed the lake. Note the near perfect symmetry of the landscape.

Lake Louise


Week 20's assignment from Leah had her followers playing with potential layouts and eventually selecting one using the wonky blocks from the previous week. This proved to be much harder than I anticipated. My wonky blocks just didn't like to play well together. Some of it had to do with the broad spectrum of values in the fabrics going from fairly light to very dark. However, the fact that lines created by the piecing of the blocks were close but off had an unsettling, jarring effect. Nevertheless I preserved and discovered that symmetry helped. I also added an extra strip on two sides of the quilt (top and bottom of the horizontal quilt) in order to "finish" the border.

Wonky Top Hung Horizontally


Wonky Top Hung Vertically

I'd love your feedback. Which do you think works best, the horizontal or vertical orientation?



12 comments:

  1. My vote is for the vertical orientation. Trying to come up with a reason and all I can say is I like it better. I like the symmetry but I think that is because it's what we're use to. It's hard to "let go". Good job.

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  2. I like the look of all of the strips going the same way. The green background was a great choice to make them pop! Horizontal layout is my favourite.

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  3. At first look-see I thought the vertical but the longer I REALLY looked the more I decided each had their own "pluses". I guess, it will depend on the direction the quilting takes....that might influence the final choice. Great help, hmmmmmmm? Probably not so much...hehe!

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  4. What a beautiful photo ~ looks like a wonderful vacation spot! Love your fabrics, and my personal choice is the vertical one, for I like the cross in the middle out of the green fabrics :)
    Godspeed,
    mary

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  5. Great photo, looks like the perfect Bargello design, as for the horizontal versus vertical discussion; my vote goes to vertical. No real facts why, I just feel that it looks better.

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  6. I think I like the vertical direction.

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  7. Thank you for chiming in, everyone. The green plus sign does stand out in the middle. I wander whether it will be quite as strong once it is broken up by quilting. We shall see.

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  8. ok, the Horizontal one has vertical stripes, and the vertical one has horizontal stripes. So, to not create confusion, i say #2. hehe. But really, It looks good either way.

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    1. Good point, Danielle. The quilt isn't square. My blocks are 8" x 10" and so the quilt is either 40" H x 32" W or 32" H by 40" W, but I get your confusion. So far the vertical orientation is slightly ahead. Thanks for voting.

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  9. I like Horizontal best, no reason, I just liked it best. I was born and raised in the Rockies in BC. Your photo is beautiful.

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  10. Will be fun when it's done! I like the vertical view myself.....

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  11. Thanks for chiming in, Sam and June D. I started the quilting today. It is proving to be more challenging than I anticipated.

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