… What a fun job to start the new year – IMHO one of the best, most exciting parts of designing and making a piece.

Late last year I received an inquiry from a prospective buyer, J, interested in a quilt that had already sold. However she is prepared to consider a commission, and following some dicusssions via email, J sent fabric swatches to me just before Christmas. The contents of her package divided into some very bright strong colours and some more rather subdued almost japanese prints and stripes, which IMHO would not go in the same colour scheme. So I have sent her two colour suggestions represented by
these two different collections of fabric.

In the upper photo, upon the right hand top side are several strips of prints containing colours she really likes, as they make her feel happy. Very bright saturated colours, they would look great set into some of the hand dyeds I have here by a couple of dyers, Janet Jo Smith and Dijanne Cevaal. They’d be dramatic set into charcoal grey or black, also lovely set into something pale like cream or pale grey…. I’m thinking irregular horizontal ‘wisps’ in line with our discussions on concepts of landscape as a theme.

In the lower photo, more subdued fabrics from my stash suggested by the colours of the other group of snippets. Bearing in mind the principle there should always be at least a tiny bit of yellow somewhere in a colour scheme, the bold blue/yellow/green segment in the middle of this photo would do that – with our without some support from other values of yellow. But this piece of fabric is also important as being one the client herself hand dyed, and she’d love a small piece included and the rest returned. This would be possible and marvellous in either colour scheme and would make the final design just a bit more special to her.

So the info is on its way to J, and regardless of whether she accepts the commission proposals or not, I have a couple of quilt plans that I will probably make up, anyway, taking into account upcoming exhibition deadlines and the need for some fresh new works to show.

Of course, in each case, the proportions of each colour or print will not be the same in the actual piece as it is in these auditioning lineups. It never is, in my experience, but this is how I make a selection of fabrics for any one piece. As I go along, there will be snippets or other pieces in my stash which will suggest themselves ( ” please, oh please miss, pick me?”) and other choices, once I am actually working with them will be disappointing in some way and will have to drop out of the final production. It’s not at all unlike producing a stage show.